


Between a Rock and a Hard Place

by space_marsupial



Series: Caught in the Crossfire Trilogy [1]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Reapers, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Flashbacks, Multi, Original Character-centric, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, This Whole Family Has PTSD, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-08 08:36:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 27,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14101533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/space_marsupial/pseuds/space_marsupial
Summary: After a rough start, fed-up mechanic Atria Cassi finally has her life together... until an old flame reappears. When his past catches up to them, Atria relives her own to keep her sane.





	1. Humans Have Like Infinite Business Ends

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to NoisyNoiverns for worldbuilding and writing help, and a special thanks to my lil bro and my Saltmate for listening to me rant and ramble.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fair warning, this (super-short) chapter starts pretty heavy.
> 
> Chapter Specific Warning(s):  
> \- torture

This is the last time I do _anything_ nice for anyone. I made a mental note to punch Faus hard enough in the face that his ancestors would reel from the impact. Given, of course, I got out alive and with all the parts necessary for that particular action.

I hate admitting when dad is right, and I swear after all these years, I still haven’t learned to listen to him; this is nothing like the vids. I would have preferred waking up bound and gagged with very little memory of the last three days in a five-star hotel room. Instead of high-pile plush carpet and a velvet recliner, I had a blood-and-other-unimaginable-horror encrusted floor and literally the most uncomfortable chair in existence. Really, rusted nails in the seat would’ve improved it. No room service, no silk blindfold, no buxom raven-haired seductress in a risque little number awaiting my awakening with a riding crop and a safeword.

Reality is a bitch.

I couldn’t remember exactly _how_ I ended up in that chair, just that I was there, it _sucked_ , and the assholes keeping me had a mean streak a mile long. They wanted information I didn’t possess, somehow under the impression I was privy to Faus’ current location, despite my fervent insistence to the contrary. From what I could tell, there were three of them tasked with working me over, all turian: two barefaced mercs, and a deceptively pretty one painted up with Palaven blue. He seemed to be in charge of the galaxy’s worst welcoming committee, and easily the biggest bastard in the Milky Way. I’ve met rabid varren that had better attitudes. I had no idea how long they’d held me captive; indefinite solitary confinement in windowless rooms tends to warp one’s perception of the passage of time. I assumed the salarian medic came in once a day to shove a stale ration bar down my throat and provide the bare minimum patch-job to keep me alive, and if that was the case, by day three I’d had enough.

Clearly, the Bastard Brigade had dealt with a softer-skinned species before, because they knew where to hit and how hard to make it hurt _just enough_ , but they seemed to forget one crucial difference in anatomy. See, turian facial structure makes it damn hard to spit. They get something stuck in their throat and it’s just a huge, gross production to get it out. They don’t expect that messy little projectile to come flying out at their faces. Ol’ Blue got right in mine and I couldn’t resist. Damn, if it wasn’t satisfying to see that big wad of mucus and what little saliva my dehydrated mouth could manage sliding right down one of those pretty blue stripes.

Another little anatomical difference? Turians have plates everywhere; we don’t. They can take a pretty nasty backhand to the face and not even budge. He reared back and cracked me across the cheek with enough force it toppled me in the chair. My head bounced twice off the filthy floor; I spat out my back two molars, adding a little red to the blue and brown that painted it. For a moment, I couldn’t figure out if it was just me or if they’d dimmed the lights.

The door slammed shut and I realized it was, in fact, just me, losing consciousness again.


	2. Don't Feed the Strays or They'll Keep Coming Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tragic backstory is tragic, but it gets better, right? Atria recalls her early childhood with something akin to fondness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Specific Warning(s):  
> \- drug use/overdose (background)  
> \- child neglect  
> \- domestic troubles (background)

I barely remember my birth mother, and her face is always just a blur when I try. What few memories I have of her, she was with one deadbeat shitbag or another snorting, injecting, smoking, or popping the entire alphabet of illicit substances the galaxy had to offer. Meanwhile I tried to stay quiet in the corner, belly aching from hunger and muscles aching with sand-shakes. She took care of both when she remembered, dusting unidentifiable gruel with red sand to stop the withdrawal. Funny how my most vivid memory of her is the day I found her unconscious, or possibly dead, on the one piece of furniture she owned - a dirty old mattress she found in a trash chute; my cradle was a pile of ragged blankets in one corner of her single-room flat. I left her there, in a crusty pool of her own puke, and never went back. Omega wasn’t much of a place for a child, but I had a better chance of survival with the ne’er-do-wells and hookers than I ever did with her.

I fought and scrapped my way through urchin pack after urchin pack for begging rights, food, and occasional shelter from the station’s residents and transients alike. I didn’t know what a pirate was, or a slaver, or a killer-for-hire; they were all the same to me, some nicer than others. The shakes got worse for a while and never quite went away. Some nights my whole body seized up like a demon had taken hold and refused to let go. I’ve still got a tremble, and I haven’t touched the stuff in years. After a few months, and a few close calls, I started to learn what kind of people were safe to approach and which ones would try to lure me in and snatch me up. I learned how to tell a good mine shaft from a potential collapse risk. I made friends with a few fellow duct rats; bad move, in retrospect, considering the mortality rate of persons under the age of sixteen on Omega. I lost almost all of them to slavers, cave-ins, and just plain bad luck. I had a bad habit of waking up in places in which I didn’t remember falling asleep. Twice, I woke up just in time to sneak off a ship before they finished loading up, and once, I woke up on a mining conveyor.

 

* * *

 

 

About a year in, I met the Cassi’s. A bratty teenage turian tripped over me, knocking me into a gutter and my hard-earned stale pastry down a hole. His older brother helped me up and I assumed the two engaged in a brief argument that resulted in a mumbled, half-hearted apology from the younger one. I say ‘assumed,’ because being a pickpocket street kid didn’t exactly pay high-end translation implant money, or even low-end omnitool money, for that matter. Through an elaborate series of hand gestures, the elder managed to convince me to follow them home for dinner. I remember hoping I wasn’t dinner.

Their parents were away when we arrived at their apartment. The younger brother flopped down on the couch and kicked up his feet on the low table, disturbing both the pile of dishes on the table and the couch’s prior occupant. Other than an angry noise, however, the crested made no other acknowledgment of the invasion, never looking up from typing on his omnitool. I stood across the room with the older brother, wringing my hands. After ten minutes (or an eternity, depending on perspective) of awkward silence broken only by the ambient noise of the vidscreen, the eldest sighed and ushered me over to an empty cushion. He at least granted me the small mercy of placing himself between me and the other two before activating a translation app on his omnitool so we could at least make some attempt at small-talk. He introduced himself as Nico, and that he was fifteen and really, _really_ liked _Blasto_ movies. Their parents were Fira, who would supposedly love me, and Talus, who would be pissed if he found out. Alion was ‘the less-important middle child,’ and Nico insisted I should call him ‘Ali.’ Alion insisted I should _not_. The youngest was twelve, named Janus, and agreed with Alion’s assessment of the situation. Nico brushed them both off and gestured to me.

And found out I didn’t speak.

Nico adapted quickly enough, shifting to yes-or-no questions, most of which I answered with a shrug. Their mother arrived home halfway through _Last of the Legion_. She didn’t notice me at first (something to which I was accustomed), making a beeline to smack her youngest son’s feet off the table. When she looked up from scolding him, however, her soft keen was my only warning before she hooked her hands under my arms and lifted me to her eye level (something to which I _wasn’t_ accustomed). She tucked me against her hip before I could wave. I was given a cursory tour of the place and _preened_. She didn’t put me down to cook either; the heat from the big stew pot slightly burned my cheeks when she leaned in to stir its contents between chattering away at me in her native tongue, and ogling me like she’d never seen a little girl in her life. Her armor was cold, uncomfortable, and slightly tacky with what I prayed was just engine coolant or general Omega dampness. Despite the species difference, in the half an hour or so I’d known this strange woman, she was more of a mom to me than my birth mother had ever been. I would hold onto that tiny spark of happiness as long as I could.

As it turned out, dinner consisted of some kind of spiced, potato-based stew, not tiny brown street girl. There was nothing particularly special about it. It was cheap, bland, kind of runny, and not really filling, but it was, and will always be, my favorite meal of all time. It was the first home-cooked meal I’d ever had, and the first thing she ever made for me. After dinner, they let me use the shower. I sat in front of the all-in-one, in one of Nico’s hoodies, watching my clothes tumble.

Fira and I were cuddled under a heavy blanket while she read me a holo-story when The Bondmate came stomping through the door, throwing off his armor like a trail of breadcrumbs behind him on his way to the bathroom. She shrugged it off and continued reading aloud, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the bright Blue Suns insignia on every piece. He proceeded immediately from the shower into the kitchen, she excused herself and joined him, and I snuck out as quickly as I could to a chorus of hushed shouting, returning to my mine shafts, and begging, and lack of warm food.

 

* * *

 

 

Something possessed me to go back the next week.

And the next.

And the next.

My visits became more frequent as time passed. I started picking up their language one or two words at a time, and was gradually able to piece together their halves of conversations without a translator. The Bondmate didn’t acknowledge me much, but that was fine by me; men had never been much of a positive influence on my life, and he was usually drunk or in the process of getting there. On occasion, it was obvious he’d dipped into something stronger. I excused myself early those nights.

Each visit brought with it an increased difficulty for me to leave, and each time Fira begged me to stay became more difficult to refuse. I couldn’t find comfort in the mine shafts anymore. The sweet treats from the carts lost their appeal. The normal, ever-present bustle of the station kept me awake instead of lulling me to sleep.

So the next time I visited, I stayed the night. She made a nest of blankets on the couch for me, read me a story, and tucked me in. She bumped her forehead against mine before heading off to her own room. I slept like a rock. I slipped out the next morning when she left, and returned in time for dinner. Each night after that, I slept on their couch.

She’s the one that gave me a name. I don’t think my birth mother ever named me. I don’t remember her referring to me by anything, or even talking to me. No one on that entire station ever bothered to think of me as anything other than slightly sentient garbage, until this family came along. She seemed really bothered by something I didn’t even know I was supposed to be bothered by, and we spent three hours looking through name lists until we found one we both liked. Atria. It’s some bright star in some obscure human constellation. I just liked the sound of it at the time, and seven year-old me appreciated that it sounded good with “princess” in front of it. That’s what she did to me: I went from a scrappy pickpocket with no idea if the next day would be my last to a princess wannabe with hopes and dreams. I liked pretending she was my  _real_ mom, that my life before had just been a very long, very bad dream. She watched tutorials and braided my hair in ways I didn't think possible. She wiped my face when I cried. She let me believe in fairy tales.

When I disappeared for a few days due to a collapsed mineshaft and had to dig my way out, she looked for me. They all did, actually, and when I showed up at their doorstep covered in dust and grime, tears running down my face, I was greeted with all seven-foot-eight of Talus Cassi scooping me into a crushing embrace. He smelled like whiskey and gun oil, but that was fine by me; a hug was a hug, and he was warm, and cared that I was gone.

Another year went by, and a rift tore its way through the Blue Suns. Fira explained that there was the Good Boss and a very Bad Man that made some very bad decisions, and they sided with Good Boss and needed to find work elsewhere. I helped pack up their apartment and transfer everything onto their cramped little ship. I swore I wouldn't cry as I watched them load their whole lives onto the _Merkava_. _They gave me a good life and they need to move on_ , I told myself,  _I shouldn’t be selfish and make them feel guilty_. My eyes burned as I watched my pretend-brothers board the ship. I was going to miss them. Even Janus. The knot in my throat swelled. I couldn't breathe.

A pair of large hands lifted me onto a hip that was  _not_ Fira's and carried me up the ramp.

“You didn't think Fira was gonna let me leave you here, did you? Welcome to the family, princess.”

What dad said, went. His gruff affirmation made it official.

The airlock hissed shut, and I didn't have to pretend anymore.


	3. Maybe Refrain From Letting Kids Crawl Around in Engines?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I've only had Atria for a day and a half, but if anything happened to her, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself." -Talus Cassi, probably
> 
> Have some family fluff.

I learned very quickly that spacer life was nothing like station life. The _Merkava_ barely had enough room for two turians, mush less a family of six. Fira and Talus crammed onto the pull-down bunk in the small living space and I slept in a pile of bedrolls and blankets on the floor with the boys. My brothers were warm and gave me as much space as they could, but a few night cycles in, I got tired of the poking and jabbing of too many unyielding plates and sharp angles.

I wrapped up in a comforter, waddled into the cockpit, and made myself a nest in dad’s chair. The void of space made better wallpaper than most girls my age had, or so I assumed, and the soft beeping of the various instruments issuing their feedback worked as well as any lullaby. It certainly beat having Janus snoring in my ear.

I woke in dad’s lap, still nested in my big blanket. He held me to his keel with one hand and steered with the other. He hummed softly in his chest, the low vibrations of the tune tickling my face. Mom was perched comfortably in the copilot’s seat, feet crossed on the dash, datapad in hand. From between the folds of my cocoon, I could see her look over and smile every now and then. I still don’t know if she was smiling at him, or me, or the two of us together. She was always so cheerful, her eyes were always so full of love. I knew he looked back at her every time she looked away. I felt him move. I felt the affectionate thrumming that rumbled through his keel. It always made me giggle, and then they laughed, and we were all so happy.

I spent my nights in that chair that smelled like whiskey and gun oil, and sat in his lap whenever he flew. After a while, he let me put my hands over his so I could pretend I was flying, too. He guided me to dive and roll to evade invisible enemies in make-believe space battles. Mom joined in, spotting phantom fighters nd cheering when she shot one down.

Sometimes one of my brothers switched out co-pilot positions so mom could nap, but for the most part, if dad was flying the ship, she was a permanent fixture at his side. She was always reading, sometimes aloud, feet up, ankles crossed. It was a welcome constant. I could see the absolute trust she had in him. Even when we had to outrun a rival ship in a _real_ space battle, she didn’t budge. She knew he would get us to safety. He did. When he released his death-grip on the controls and released the breath he’d been holding, she smiled at him and went back to her reading.

* * *

 

After a few months of the six of us crammed into a tiny space, we finally docked for an extended period of time to get supplies. I was grateful for the elbow room. I never thought I would be _happy_ to be back on Omega. Of course, my brothers teased me about it as they walked me from shop to shop. We all got an allowance to spend while we were in port; they informed me this was normal when I looked at my father like he’d lost his mind for just _handing_ me a chit loaded with fifty credits. My first instinct was to hoard it. Nico was having none of that. He repeatedly assured me I would get more on our next outing every time I looked longingly at a dress in a shop window or a street vendor stall piled high with food. I ended up buying a fluffy, collapsible nest-bed designed for turian children and a new comforter to match. Janus returned the shopkeep’s dirty look as we left.

Nico quickly cuffed Janus to stifle whatever rude remark he was about to pop off. “It’s probably these,” he explained, waving his hand in front of his face. “You’ll get the same look when you’ve got ‘em.”

Ali disagreed. “It’s probably the little human buying t-” Nico snatched my translation earpiece before I could catch the end of their conversation, and gave it back after their _very_ heated argument.

When I asked why it mattered, I was met with confused stares and very careful wording. “It’s… _complicated_. Don’t worry about it, just enjoy yourself” was the _least_ convincing response I’d ever heard out of Nico, but I nodded anyway. There was no sense pushing the issue. I was used to those looks by the time we returned to the ship.

Our parents stopped us before we boarded, explaining that our “fleet” had expanded, and we had to pick which ship we wanted to be on until the next time we docked. Mom’s was apparently bigger; there were two mini-cabins and two pull-down bunks in the main area. The boys loaded up with her, content to finally have space to stretch out. To everyone’s surprise, I went with dad.

My response was simple. “He needs a co-pilot, and I can’t hear Janus snoring if I’m on a different ship.” I couldn’t place the expression dad made, so I just gave him my biggest, toothiest grin.

After hugs were exchanged, I made a beeline for the cockpit. I kicked off my shoes and set up my nest in mom’s chair, stretching my legs out until my toes just barely touched the dash. Dad laughed from his seat when I pulled out the datapad mom pre-loaded with children’s stories. The soft click of his camera app was almost drowned out by the engines starting up.

He woke me when we were out of orbit and drifting. I followed his outstretched arm to the starboard viewport. Mom was waving from the _Galatea_ ’s cockpit. I waved back. From there, I could see just how much bigger her ship was. She started signaling something I didn’t understand that made dad’s mandibles clack against his face. “Your mother wants to race,” was the only explanation I received before we surged forward. The _Merkava_ had slower-reacting dampeners, so we always felt the beginning of any movement. It made my brothers sick. I loved it. I let out an excited scream, and he manually deactivated them. We screamed and shouted together until our voices were hoarse. He was in his early forties, I was eight, but in that moment we were both kids on one hell of a ride.

She won. It didn’t matter. At some point they had activated a comm link and were bantering back and forth when a loud clunk echoed from the engine room. They both swore. It took almost an hour to get the ships tethered so mom could tow the old beast while dad tried to fix the engine. I followed him into the bowels of the ship, holding the worklight where he directed. He banged around and shouted more _colorful_ swears, coming up empty-handed. His hand had slipped and his wrench was lost somewhere in the engine, posing an even bigger problem if we didn’t find it. I handed him the light and shimmied into the hatch. The runaway tool had lodged itself just out of his reach, but well within mine. I popped back out, wielding the wrench victoriously. He took it, thought for a moment, and handed it back. Dad then proceeded to gesture for me to crawl back in and told me exactly what to look for when I got there. I made adjustments under his guidance, and within a few hours, we were untethered and flying on our own again.

* * *

 

After that, I was hooked. I read every manual I could get my fingers on, and had dad teach me everything he knew. Which was, apparently, quite a bit - my parents made their living scrapping ships and putting them back together. A fair amount of technical knowledge is required for that to pan out successfully.

The next time we docked, they bought me an envirosuit for flying between the ships. It was the first item of clothing anyone ever bought for me, the first piece of new clothing that was given to me, and I still have it. Stupid, I know. It wasn’t the most expensive suit on the market, but it was functional and safe and _purple_. It was even gift-wrapped. I remember the utter frustration on dad’s face as I meticulously unwrapped the silver paper and folded each piece carefully in my lap. I tucked it all away in the toolbag I carried everywhere. (I still have that, too, paper still tucked away safely in the front-middle pocket.) When the contents were revealed, dad checked his helmet for cracks from the ear-splitting screech of delight I’m still not entirely sure came from me. I ran laps around the bench in the middle of the busy spaceport, screaming like I’d won the lottery. My parents laughed with me, not a care in the world that people were staring. Mom helped me put it on over my clothes and I ran around some more, twirling around dad as if they’d given me a ballgown.

Of course, that suit also meant getting spaced. Often. Though, really, spacing a nine-year-old _once_ is excessive, but at least my parents were smart about it. They put the ships on autodrift, then dad followed me out the airlock on a tether, and pushed me through the gap to mom. She caught me and brought me inside, and everything was hunky-dory. I’d do my tinkering with the _Galatea_ ’s engines, have a nice meal, maybe spend the night cycle, and then they’d do the same thing to return me to the _Merkava_. It was _exhilarating_. Sure, tossing a child back and forth in the icy, black vacuum of space to crawl around in heavy machinery for a few hours wouldn’t make the cover of _Galactic Parenting_ , but it’s not like they forced me to do it. I liked helping. Dad couldn’t get around like he used to or fit into nooks and crannies like me, and mom didn’t know jack-shit about engine maintenance. In a few months, I knew more about both ships than either of them, and then some.

It also gave dad and I common ground to bond over. I still wasn’t the best at conversation. Mom said it was something called ‘selective mutism.’ I knew it was hard for dad having his bondmate on another vessel. Most nights he slept in the cockpit with me, just so he wouldn’t be alone. Neither of us slept more than an hour or two at a time, kept awake by old memories and nightmares. He listened to a lot of audiobooks on parenting while we were in FTL and had nothing better to do; none of those are worth shit, by the way. He bounced the content off mom in their vidchats. They agreed on some of it and laughed off the rest, then got quiet for a while, then cut the feed abruptly. The separation was difficult for both of them - it was obvious to anyone with eyes. As a result, he and I managed to form a pretty decent relationship. He was never close to the boys because of work, and I think mom was happy he finally had some kind of connection with at least one kid, adopted or not. The closer we got, the better we both slept, until mom had to start spamming the commlink to wake us during the day cycle. Mom and dad started taking us shopping as a family instead of leaving us to our own devices.

Dad and I had adventures on the ship. Mom told me later he was really creative when they met, that he’d just gotten too caught up in bullshit. He would be the pirate king, and I would be the pirate princess; we would fight through holos of undead hoards and execute would-be mutineers. We did battle with great beasts of forgotten realms, plundered merchant vessels fat with treasure, and explored untouched, uncharted worlds. We made a blanket-fort-slash-vid-theatre in the cabin he no longer used. He taught me to play Skyllian Five, how to cheat at Skyllian Five, and how to be a sore loser. We even tried to shoot a cooking show once, but that ended in a complete disaster that took four hours to clean and permanently scarred the galley. I learned swears in just about every language in the galaxy that day, and was told to never repeat them… or tell mom that I’d learned them in the first place. He taught me how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble every gun he owned. He taught me how to fly. He figured if I knew how the engine worked, it was about time I learned how the rest of the damn thing worked, too. The next time I sat in his lap while he flew, his hands stayed at his side as I guided us along a course he charted.

In two short years, I’d gained a family and a best friend. Then, we docked for a week in a Taetran port and everything changed.


	4. Sometimes Change is a Good Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Atria gets a present she neither wanted nor asked for, and some one-on-one time with mom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-Specific Warning(s):  
> \- mild family violence towards the end

Mom got really sick the week after we left port. She was throwing up all the time. She wasn’t sleeping. Half the time, Alion was at the helm while she used the toilet as a pillow. It took two weeks for dad to convince her to see a doctor. They sat us down in the exam room and I swore they were about to tell us she had a week to live. Instead, we found out she was pregnant. I thought the boys were being assholes when they awkwardly congratulated her, humming disgust in their subvocals. I didn’t know the implication of the announcement was that during the last few days we’d spent in port basically fending for ourselves, our parents were locked away in their room desecrating every possible surface they could find. I was ecstatic at the news. At first. A new sibling meant I would no longer be the baby. I would have a younger sibling to tend to and care for. Furthermore, I would no longer be the butt of my brothers’ pranks. Janus passed me the torch for that, and I would happily pass the torch to the new bundle of joy.

Two months into the pregnancy, however, the complications began. We were lucky we were already on course for Taetrus to rendezvous with one of dad’s contacts. Dad was an absolute wreck the whole way to the hospital. Mom was admitted for two agonizing weeks; I lived at the hospital while dad and my brothers struggled to find work that wouldn’t take them too far. When she was ordered on bedrest for the remainder of her pregnancy, I realized we weren’t leaving.

I was an absolute brat about it. I wanted to go back to the stars and race comets and play pretend with dad. I didn’t want to be stuck in a musty old apartment with a leaky roof and drunk, angry neighbors.

I was so selfish. It was disgusting. I would give anything to go back in time and smack some sense into my ten-year-old self.

It drove her up the wall laying around while dad and my brothers ran themselves into the ground. We read together to pass the time and to keep us both sane. When we ran out of interesting books, she told me her own stories. Her parents were both military; she was a spacer brat. She was nineteen when she met Talus in a spaceport. He was twenty-five. Her parents were understandably pissed when she found out she was pregnant with Nico. She kept in touch with him via public terminals so her parents wouldn’t catch on, and was granted a leave of absence until she had her child. Instead of shipping out when she checked out of the hospital, she hitchhiked out of the system, infant son in tow, and eloped with Talus on Omega in a stolen wedding dress. She was considered AWOL for six years, then MIA, then dead.

Fira wasn’t even her real name, but she’d been going by it for so long, she forgot what her real name was. She and dad were still madly in love. She always wanted a daughter; she said I was a gift from the spirit of her grandmother, who was the only member of her family who wanted her to follow her own dreams and not theirs. She found out about her grandmother’s passing from an obituary three years after the fact. She never got to say goodbye. Mom fell silent for a while after, staring at her hands in her lap as if they were covered in more blood than a thousand apologies could ever wash away.

When she started talking again, her voice was light again, but her subvocals were dissonant. I kept my mouth shut. The doctor said no stress, so I didn’t pry. She picked up where she left off. She had Ali halfway between two mass relays, and popped Janus out while they were running from a Spectre. She was scared something bad would happen to this one.

She told me about spirits. She told me secrets I swore I would take to my grave.

She was six weeks from her due date when she had her first seizure. I didn’t know what to do. It was terrifying to watch her in the throes of what had to be sheer agony, gasping for air and unable to ground herself. I pinged dad and begged her grandmother not to take her yet. Dad carried her on foot to the hospital, my brothers and I close behind. She had five more over the next three weeks while she was admitted.

When her water broke, it was mostly blood. The doctors kicked my father out of the room. She screamed for seven of the sixteen total hours she was behind that door. Dad and the boys were sure when the screaming stopped, she was gone, and Nico spent three hours outside the hospital with dad trying to calm him down while Ali tried to explain to me what was happening. Janus stopped him before he said anything that would send me into hysterics. I was more in shock when he sat me down and started reading _Engineering Weekly_ with me than Ali attempting to dance around ‘hey, mom might be dead.’

The remaining six hours were spent in silence. Dad paced, his chest creaking with a suppressed keen. My brothers all tried to remain occupied. I read about pregnancy and the complications involved. Then we heard the baby squawking.

I thought dad would claw his way through the door if the doctors didn’t open it fast enough. He plowed through the crowd, ignoring the protests that he wasn’t wearing any protective clothing and that mom needed rest, and threw himself on the bed. Mom smiled down at him, offering the tiny bundle in her arms. He cradled it like a nuclear weapon. I’d never seen this side of dad, holding up the tiny chick to examine him as if he was a priceless artifact. I had a shiny new baby brother, Lintius, and mom was okay, albeit completely exhausted. She was drifting off while they were filling out the paperwork and slept several hours afterward.

We stayed in the hospital four more days before we could go home. In that time, I found out turians regurgitate food for their young until they can eat their own. I went down the hall each time Linni was fed after his first meal almost made me regurgitate my own. Everything about him was _delicate_ ; I wasn’t allowed to hold him or talk too loud or even breathe too hard near him or he’d break.

But he was healthy, and _mom was okay._ As far as I was concerned, that’s all that mattered.

* * *

 

I didn’t see much of my older brothers after that. Alion spent a year on Palaven for mandatory, the first and only Cassi boy to ever go. When he came back, he spent a lot of time in his room or at the library. A few times I thought I heard another voice in his room. He said he was just studying. Janus told me he was ‘hooked on some fancy bitch from Vallum.’ I just nodded, I had no clue what any of those words meant. They argued a lot.

Nico disappeared for days at a time. It bothered mom, but she wouldn’t talk to him about it. He always came home angry about something. I’d never heard him raise his voice before. He yelled at Alion more than he had civil conversations with him. He started drinking and going on long rants about ‘hierarchy injustice’ and ‘low-tier discrimination’ and it all went over my head. He took his dinner to his room, if he was home, or ate a few bites and left again. He made the mistake of snapping at dad once; he got kicked out for a week. His room filled up with pamphlets and flyers. I saw him once or twice on the news, at political rallies.

Janus spent more time with mom and Linni, and I wish it would have stayed that way. Maybe shit wouldn’t have turned out like it did. Maybe volus would sprout wings and fly their fat little bodies around the Citadel. He looked up to our oldest brother, we all did, and I shouldn’t blame Nico for falling for the separatists’ bullshit. I saw their leader on the vidscreen once before mom made Nico turn it off. He was a damn good talker. The louder he talked, the more my oldest brother pulled away from the family, and a small part of me hoped he kept going and didn’t come back. It was shitty. I know it was. But it’s hard not to be bitter when the words ‘human-appeasing’ got thrown around with such vitriol. They forgot sometimes, I think, that I’m not turian.

Alion left after a particularly nasty fight with Nico. He didn’t come back. Mom managed to reach him a few days later with a vid call. He introduced us to his fiancee. I thought she seemed nice, but Janus and Nico were pissed. Janus stormed off. Nico called him a ‘barefaced traitor’ and threatened to kill him if he came anywhere near the family again. Dad punched Nico into a wall, then dragged him outside by his cowl. Alion shrugged in response, told mom and I he missed us and Linni, and ended the call. We were still too stunned by dad’s outburst to do more than wave goodbye. My father wasn’t a violent man. At least, not at home. He drank whiskey like water, sure, and he argued with mom and the boys, but he never raised a hand to any of us.

I thought that would be the end of it. Maybe dad would knock some sense into Nico and he would apologize and everything would be okay again.

Volus still can’t fly.

 


	5. No Place Like Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Except we can't all just click our heels three times and fix everything, can we?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter literally could not have happened without NoisyNoivern's late-night worldbuilding help. Thanks homie!

Dad got tired of bouncing from job to job, and ultimately grew tired of working for other people, period. So, he did what any other patriarch would do when the daily grind sucked too much but he still needed to provide for his family: he started a chop shop out of the abandoned hangar down the street. Honestly, I was surprised he didn’t do it sooner. The man couldn’t go legit if he wanted to. He really, _really_ wanted to. He started the business with an old friend of his - his buddy grabbed a ship or a car, and he scrapped it, did a little cleaning, and resold the parts. We were actually doing pretty well. Dad bought the house next to the hangar so we could move out of the apartment. I got my own room, we replaced the leaky roof and the rusty pipes, and Lintius finally got regular checkups. Which also meant the doctors caught his degenerative nerve issue early enough to basically tell us there wasn’t anything they could do until he got older, and even then, there was only a slim chance he’d walk on his own. But, you know, at least they caught it. Mom was devastated; she blamed herself for it.

When a Spectre blasted dad’s partner out of the sky, mom stepped in to do acquisitions. Dad protested, of course, and she responded by telling him where he could shove his wrench. She was younger than him by six years. Her ship was both newer and faster. He was better at scrapping _and_ had me there to help. All of her arguments outweighed his macho posturing, and he was left with a one year old, two absentee sons, and a preteen human daughter.

The nights Janus and Nico came home were unpleasant at best, and luckily they were few and far between. I don’t know where they stayed every other night. I didn’t care. Dad stopped sleeping in his room if mom wasn’t home, so I slept in the chair next to him so he wouldn’t be alone, Linni bundled safely in soft blankets beside me.

Working in the shop was almost like living on the ships again, minus the spacing, and with the added risk of potential raids and a curious chick around the machinery. Dad tried his best to take care of Lintius; I spent a lot of time making sure he was feeding him soft, bland foods and nothing with hot sauce. He cut back on the booze and quit dipping into the harder stuff. I pretended not to know about the occasional joint he slipped once or twice a week to dull his nerves. _That_ was difficult. It _reeked_ , and he was really bad at hiding it. To avoid wasting it when I caught him, he just sucked down as much as he could before dropping it under his foot and straining to assign me some menial task. Then I had to ignore the choking, wheezing, and eventual retching that followed. He meant well.

Between playing keep away with Linni, who very much wanted to teethe on wrenches and expressed so on multiple occasions, and helping dad clean parts, I didn’t have much free time to myself. When I did, I tinkered. My projects started out simple; I took things apart and put them back together, which progressed to taking different things apart and combining them to make something else, and eventually making something altogether new. It took me six tries, a broken arm, and a lot of nasty scrapes to build a semi-functional hoverboard from scraps dad tossed out. I should have learned from the first time dad found out about a hidden talent that skills like that would be put to use. Older ships required less computer-related knowledge, so they became his teaching tools. Mom was there for the first engine I picked apart on my own. I’ll always remember the look of absolute pride my parents shared.

Of course, I couldn’t stop there. Dad got his hands on a few programming textbooks for my adoptiversary. I miss being that much of a knowledge sponge. I raced through all four, and by the end of the third month, I had upgraded the _Galatea_ ’s systems as far as I could push them.

Mom and I went on girls’ adventures when we could. We didn’t live in the best neighborhood, but I never once felt unsafe. The Carnifex strapped to her thigh may have contributed to that a little. It started when mom pulled me out of bed in the middle of the night, rattling the box in her arms.

“Let’s go say goodbye to grandmom,” she whispered. I was confused, and a little concerned. She left as quickly as she came, expecting me to follow. I did, but not before grabbing a can opener on the way out. I was the smallest thing I could find that could be concealed in my pajama pants and could potentially be used as a weapon in case the stress had finally gotten to her. It sounds awful, but I saw it happen all the time on Omega. One couldn’t be too careful. We snuck up to the roof of our old apartment complex. Instead of hurling me off the edge, she gently set the box down, pulling out an old blanket and laying it out. She sat facing the city while she arranged the remaining contents of the box in front of her: fourteen candles, a box of matches, a few frames, and a jewelry box. Mom looked expectantly over her shoulder, gesturing for me to sit beside her. I released my white-knuckled hold on the can opener and complied.

She held up two glass bottles. Sweat beaded and dripped down the sides in the mid-summer evening heat.

“Want a beer?” I blinked twice, unsure of what I’d heard. She didn’t wait for my answer. “Pass the can opener, wouldja?”

I handed her my improvised weapon. She flipped it to the bottle side and popped off both caps in rapid succession. They landed somewhere in the shadows and pinged twice off the gravel rooftop. An open bottle was thrust into my hand without warning. I fumbled it trying to keep the sour-smelling liquid from spilling over my crossed legs.

She raised her bottle towards the night sky like an offering, gently directing me to do the same with a palm under my wrist. “To the spirit of Galatea Marcetius, resting among the brightest stars.” Her voice cracked. Mom cleared her throat and tossed back half the bottle. I took a tentative sip, scrunching my nose at the taste. It was cold, bitter bread in liquid form. “One candle for every Ancestor’s Day I’ve missed. But we made it, grandmom.” Her mandibles quivered when she met the cheerful gaze of the crestless in the largest frame. “We have a house now, and a family, and _stability_. We made it.” The candlelight reflected off her silver plates, bathing the area around her in a soft, ethereal glow.

She went on to thank her for her guidance and keeping them safe all these years. Mom ended up finishing my drink. I didn’t mind. It was awful anyway, and she needed it more than I did. I helped her pack everything back into the box before we snuck home. Apparently, these outings were our little secret. We always lit a candle for grandmom before we left the house and asked her spirit to keep us safe on our adventure. She gave me the jewelry box on my next adoptiversary and helped me set up a tiny family shrine on my dresser. I lit the candle every night mom was gone and asked grandmom to keep her safe on her adventure.

Janus started coming around more, but he was so jumpy it seemed less like a genuine attempt to reintegrate into the family and more like he was on the run and wanted safety. We _almost_ rekindled something like a familial bond. He called mom a lot when she was gone and let Lintius and me sit in on the vidcalls so she could at least say hello to the three of her five children that at least _acted_ like family. He even held his little brother on occasion.

I heard her voice through his door on my way to light my candle and quickly backtracked down the stairs to get Linni. Sometimes we only had a few minutes to talk before she hit a mark. She had her rituals, just like I had mine. She called dad on the way, and called us right before. This was an easy target, she’d said; one of dad’s contacts gave him a lead about a wrecked scavenger ship in orbit around Gellix. She just had to hook it up and tow it home. It took me five minutes to get downstairs to Lintius, get him swaddled, and skip back up the stairs. I hoped she could stay on the line a little longer since she didn’t have to commandeer anything or try to sneak the wreckage out of a port.

Vids slow everything down so action scenes can be extended for the sake of drama. Five minutes is a really long time in reality. Grav-spikes only take a seven seconds to deploy and incapacitate a ship. Three batarians can take down an armed and armored turian in about two minutes, fifty-three seconds.

By the time I made it back up the stairs, the terminal was off. Janus slumped in his chair.

“Damn, did we miss her? It’s okay, she’ll call back once she’s got the wreck tethered.” He didn’t respond. That was normal; sixteen year olds were pretty similar, regardless of species. I offered the bundle in my arms. “Can you hold him for a sec? I need to light my-”

Janus cut me off. “She’s not calling back.” His voice wavered, his subvocals a cacophonous mess. I searched his eyes for clarification when he turned to face me. My brother slid from his chair onto his knees and wrapped his arms around me. His shoulders heaved so hard he almost took all three of us to the ground. A gasp tore its way into his chest; a cough shuddered out. It took me a few minutes of confused cowl-patting to process that he was _crying_.

Dad left without a word as soon as Janus told him. He left the emergency credit chit on the counter, but took his pistol and the _Merkava_. We didn’t know if he was coming back. I moved my shrine downstairs to the endtable and made a nest with Linni in dad’s chair in case he did. He would have to wake me if he wanted to sleep there. I wondered how long it would smell like whiskey and gun oil and engine smoke. I looked to grandmom’s picture for answers. I was met with silence.

Janus was gone when I woke up sometime in the evening. Linni was screeching that he was hungry. I don’t know how I slept through it. Once my brother was fed, I grabbed mom’s memorial box from the bottom of her closet that smelled too much like her. I grabbed the framed picture on her endtable and put it in the box next to my family shrine. I strapped Linni securely to my back, shoved the can opener in my pocket, and grabbed two beers from the fridge.

I don’t fully remember the trip to the rooftop. Everything was a colorless blur until I was sitting cross-legged on the blanket in my spot, Linni fast asleep in his cocoon. I arranged everything roughly how mom did, with mom’s endtable picture directly in front of me. My dad, my brothers, and I crowded around mom in her hospital bed, a tiny bundle in her arms.

I struggled with the cap on my beer; instead of popping off, it tumbled gracelessly into my lap followed by a sad cascade of foam. I hurled it into the shadows, grunting in frustration. The other bottle went in mom’s spot, the can opener beside it.

I raised the bottle like an offering to the stars. The heat from the candles rising in the cool night air fooled me into thinking, for just a second, I felt a warm palm slide under my wrist, lifting my arm higher.

“To the spirit of Fira Cassi, racing comets through the void.”


	6. Interlude I: Wakey Wakey Where the Fuck is Faus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't sass the bad guys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warning(s):
> 
> \- bad guys are bad, and there's like one instance of vaguely graphic violence, but I'm tagging to be safe

“ _Rise and shine, princess_.”

I was ripped out of one nightmare and into another by the icy sting of slushy water thrown in my face. My nose burned as I tried in vain to choke as much liquid out of my lungs as possible, fighting the urge to just drink it. How long had it been since the medic had given me something to drink? My lips cracked with even the smallest movement.

“Not so fun getting spit on, is it?” Bareface Number One leaned in to meet my gaze. His breath smelled like stale horosk and salted eggs. It made me gag. He anticipated my next move, roughly grabbing my face and turning it to the side. “Ah-ah,” he scolded. His grip bruised my jaw to the bone; the metallic tang of blood sluiced along my tongue from where my teeth were cutting into my cheeks.

“Where’s your boyfriend, soft-skin?” Blue moved into my peripheral vision. His soft, lilting voice _dripped_ honey, and in a different context, I _might_ have considered it attractive. I cut my eyes as far left as they could go to nail him with the hardest side-eye I could muster in my current state. He knelt to my level and purred promises of graphic violence against my hair.

“ _Fuck_ you,” I hissed.

“Not my type.” He clicked his tongue and tweaked my nose to punctuate his retort. “I’ll ask one more time: _where_ is Domiril?”

A low growl rumbled out of the egg-sucker’s throat in an attempt to _convince_ me to hand Faus over. I debated it. If I had the information, I _really_ would have spilled by then. I didn’t owe him _shit_ after this mess. I shrugged.

“You’re really gonna keep protecting him? He’s the reason for all _this_.” Blue gestured to my surroundings.

“I’m not protecting him. I would happily gift-wrap his ass and hand-deliver him if I had _any_ idea where the actual fuck he ran off to. But I don’t, so it wooks wike widdle Bwue gets no pwezzie-wezzie. Boo.” I deserved the backhand that threatened to snap my head off my shoulders. Pro tip: don’t sass the guys that are twice your size and armed to the teeth. They have the high ground.

Blue’s honey soured quickly. “Maybe I’ll gift-wrap one of your _widdle_ fingers and send it to _Fausie Wausie_ _’s widdle hideout_.”

“Give ‘im this one.” I weakly flipped the bird with my left arm; my right had been dislocated in a previous conversation.

Number One flared his mandibles in what I’m sure _he_ considered a grin. “Gladly.”

Having a finger removed with a cigar-cutter doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as you’d expect.

Oh, it’s still gut-wrenchingly excruciating, and I _definitely_ puked on my feet and passed out. It just wasn’t _as_ bad as I thought it would be.


	7. Riots and Rallies and Rich Girls, Oh My!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things continue to go south, I'm soRRY.

So, where was I? Right, my whole world had just collapsed. I knew it couldn’t last.

I saw Nico twice after dad and Janus left. Linni started raising hell for his midnight meal and I stumbled half-blind and exhausted into the kitchen. I was so focused on not tripping over the toddler attempting to climb my pants leg, I walked right past him. My startled yelp upon this discovery made both Nico and Linni jump in surprise. He fumbled at the bottle of horosk he’d been nursing, catching it before it toppled to the floor. He looked like shit. His shoulders slumped under some invisible weight and his eyes were sunken in. He took another swig, not breaking eye contact.

I didn’t know what to say other than, “mom’s gone.” It sounded robotic. How do you tell someone the only person keeping the family together wasn’t coming home? His mandibles twitched as he nodded absently. It took him three tries to get up from his seat. He chucked the bottle into the garbage and stumbled out the door and out of my life.

The next time I saw him was on a news broadcast about _yet another_ separatist rally. I almost didn’t recognize him with his paint blacked out, but there he was, hands cuffed behind his back and getting roughly pushed into the back of a shuttle. _Good_ , I thought. _He can get the help he needs._ My heart dropped into my stomach when I saw Janus getting even rougher treatment. They flipped through clips of a riot that broke out as a result of the rally, including one of four turians armed with flaming bottles. When the ringleader of the small group turned, I caught a glimpse of Cassi red peeking out from beneath his black bandana. I received the automated call shortly after.

> _[Talus and Fira Cassi] we regret to inform you your [son] [Nico Cassi] has been detained on the following charges: [Civil Disobedience] and [Inciting a Riot]. [He] has been sentenced to the minimum [five years] in a [medium security facility]._
> 
> _Furthermore, your [son] [Janus Cassi] has been detained on the following charges: [two counts][Malicious Destruction of Property] and [Conspiracy to Commit an Act of Terror]. [He] has been sentenced to the minimum [fifteen years] in a [maximum security facility]._
> 
> _Correspondence will be sent to your address regarding the date of his or her appeal hearing. An attorney will be allowed at this time._

I tried calling dad at least four times a day, and after two weeks, I assumed he was gone too. The credits on the emergency chit were dwindling and at eleven, I was too young to find work on my own. I got enough looks as it was trying to shop with a toddler of a different species and a chit with a different name registered to it. I had to call Alion. I didn’t know at that point if he still wanted anything to do with us or if he even knew what had happened.

He answered on the second ring, and from the chipper tone of his subvocals, I had the answers to both my questions. As soon as he asked what was wrong, I broke. I stuttered through messy sobs in an attempt to articulate everything that had happened in the last two weeks. I finally managed a weak, “I can’t do this.”

“Do _what_? I haven’t understood a word you’ve said. What in spirits’ name is going on over there?”

“Mom died. Dad’s been gone and I think he’s dead too. Nico and Janus got arrested and Linni is hungry all the time and we’re running out of money and-”

“What?”

“Please don’t make me repeat it.”

A soft, feminine voice joined the call as Ali’s faded. I could hear muffled shouting in the background, followed by quiet keening. “Honey, we’re coming to you. Do you have food for tonight?” I hummed in affirmation.

Ali’s voice returned, subvocals warbling with grief. “Same address?” I hummed again.

We exchanged I-love-you’s and goodbyes. The line clicked and I sank to the floor. Linni crawled into my lap. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I woke up bundled in a heavy blanket in dad’s chair to the smell of breakfast. There was a crestless sitting on the couch, typing away at a portable terminal balanced on her knee, a steaming mug - my mug - of kava in her other hand. She was gorgeous. I should have been alarmed at the intruder, but something about her face seemed familiar. She was unique enough, with iridescent white plates that shone slightly lilac when she turned to acknowledge me with a gentle, “hi, darling.”

It took me a few minutes to realize Linni was no longer in my lap and I panicked, frantically digging through the heavy comforter for any sign of my little brother. Alion emerged from the kitchen with a plate piled with eggs and sausage, Linni tucked in some kind of wrap draped across his chest. “Relax, sis, I have him.” He set the plate on the table with a single fork next to it. “Eat. I felt your ribs when I picked you up.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I licked the plate clean.

“Do you remember Camicidia? This isn’t… how I wanted you to meet her in person. I wanted-” Ali’s voice caught in his throat. I watched the emotions play across his face as he struggled to speak again. His entire body dropped under the weight of the realization that his engagement party consisted of us. Alion always had something to say about everything, for as long as I’d known him. He _shattered_ under the pressure. Shards of his carefully curated pokerface shredded through the frayed remains of my self-control and when he pulled me into a hug, I let myself really cry for the first time since Janus left.

Camicidia joined our angry-grieving puddle on the floor. My stupid grief-fogged brain decided her hugs felt just like mom’s. The tiny logical part of my consciousness reminded it bluntly that she was _gone_ -gone, sending me into the most embarrassing tantrum-spiral of my life.

I repeated “it’s not _fair_ ” over and over like a mantra, each time hoping it would undo the shitty, awful, terrible, no-good, very bad things that transpired over the past few weeks. Every repetition was met with an “I know” from Alion and the staticy silence of an apathetic universe that was never listening from the get-go.

I don’t remember much of the rest of that day, or the even the rest of the month, for that matter. It passed by in a numb blur. Ali cooked, Linni started babbling at some point, Cami stayed pretty. We were in the middle of some department store discussing the difference between clothes that were and were _not_ acceptable to wear in public, my stolen-from-Nico Blasto hoodie fitting into the former category and my pink puppy-patterned pajama pants she forced me to change out of fitting into the latter, when my Omnitool lit up like Unification Day. I’d never heard the notification sound for an _urgent_ call, especially one from an encrypted number, and it made me jump.

Dad’s voice sucker-punched my soul out of my body.

> _“I’m on my way home, princess. Get the hangar ready, I’m comin’ in **hot**.”_


	8. Crash and Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Talus makes his grand entrance, and Atria would very much like to get off this roller coaster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-Specific Warning(s):  
> \- medical gore  
> \- heavy alcohol use

I scrambled out of Cami’s skycar with the gusto of a child on Ancestor’s Day.

And realized I had no _fucking_ clue what Dad meant by “get the hangar ready.” By the level of _completely shit-faced_ apparent in his voice, there was a good chance he didn’t either.

The spot the _Merkava_ had occupied in the hangar for the year we’d lived there had remained empty for the month Dad had been gone. It was a shock he’d managed to even get the old girl _moving_ , much less broken the atmosphere, since she’d sat for so long.

So I swept. And mopped. And paced.

Dad was coming home. Dad was alive. Maybe the universe wasn’t so deaf to my mantra as I thought.

The computer pinged with an incoming alert to open the roof hatch shortly before I heard the roar of the _Merkava’s_ cranky old engine break through the troposphere. I keyed in the sequence to pop the latches and retract the rusted panels to prepare for touchdown.

The panels clanged open. The _Merkava_ came screaming through the front wall. Right. " _Coming in hot_."

Dad told me the story of how he named her over dinner once. She was the first ship Dad didn’t steal or borrow. He was so proud when he walked Mom to see her in the spaceport, hands over her eyes and a Cassi grin flinging his mandibles asunder. He made a big reveal and Mom tried her best to smile at the busted-up Kestrel, but she physically couldn’t lie to him. “It’s gonna take a sea of caffeine and three drums of elbow grease to get this piece of shit off the ground.” _Six_ drums of elbow grease, a few thousand credits, and a few new scars later, she was spaceworthy and newly-dubbed _Merkava_ \- Sea of Caffeine.

She’d returned to her roots, it seemed. I peeked around the afterburn shield I’d just narrowly been able to engage to assess the damage. She was missing half her outer paneling and her cargo hatch was partially embedded in the sidewalk. I slammed my fist on the ventilation fans to clear some of the smoke billowing from her engine.

Dad stumbled out of the emergency eject panel and onto his face, somehow managing to not spill a single drop of whiskey from the mostly-empty bottle dangling limply from his left hand. His armor was in worse shape than his ship.

“Dad, what the _fuck_?”

“Language, princess,” he grumbled. “ _Getthedoctor_.”

I screamed for Alion instead, eliciting a less-than-thrilled groan from the crumpled pile of armor and turian on the floor. Ali echoed my response, then dad’s order as he rushed to roll our father over. I climbed over the remnants of the front wall, briefly wondering how we were gonna fix _that_ , and sprinted up the fire escape of the building across the street.

Doctor Aerax Prekashan is a retired-field-medic-turned-veterinarian, and easily the most patient man in the galaxy, except when woken up at twenty-past-three in the morning by frantic banging on his back door. His stomping, door-slamming reaction to such an occurrence was tempered by a teary-eyed eleven year-old scared out of her wits and rambling about her dad dying in the hangar. He disappeared inside his dark apartment in a flurry of swears, returning with two duffel bags and an unlabeled bottle of clear liquid he promptly shoved into my hands. I tripped over my feet trying to keep up with his long, hurried strides. I had to hand it to him, he didn’t even pause at the new front entrance or the dangling panel that finally gave up and pried its way off the smoking remains of Dad’s pride and joy. Ali had managed to pry Dad out of the wrecked shell of his armor and was gnawing nervously on his talons.

“Talus Cassi, who did you piss off _this_ time?” he chided.

“ _They_ pissed _me_ off, you old fuck,” Dad growled in response, taking a swig from the bottle. He looked at it with betrayal when nothing came out. “Killed m’wife,” he added softly.

That stopped Doc Prekashan in his tracks. “I’m sorry.” He dropped the bags next to Dad and gestured for me to follow. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see the extent of the damage. Doc Prekashan shooed Ali away, mumbling something about “offending his delicate sensibilities” and “not throwing up on his _goddamn_ supplies.”

I managed to edge closer and immediately regretted it. Dad reeked of blood and alcohol and _worse_. I fought back the gag clenching my throat. Doc Prekashan was miraculously unaffected, tempered by years of battlefield carnage. He tutted as he checked Dad’s vitals.

“It’s just a few gunshots and an infection, Atria. You grew up on Omega, I _know_ you’ve seen worse.”

He wasn’t wrong. I had. But those were mercs and junkies and slavers. They weren’t Dad. Big, indestructible, unflappable Talus “Mad Varren” Cassi, who outran Spectres and fought off bands of pirates and told the best bedtime stories.

I couldn’t reconcile _that_ Talus Cassi with the one bleeding out on the floor in our own home. This one couldn’t keep his eyes open. This one winced every time Doc Prekashan applied medigel to wound after wound after wound. This one looked so small, and broken, and sad.

“Atria, did you hear me?” I shook my head. “I have to amputate his leg. Give me the bottle.”

It didn’t click what was happening until he ripped off his sleeve and shoved it in Dad’s mouth.

“Shouldn’t we take him to the hospital?” I asked, releasing my hold on the bottle before he yanked my shoulder out of socket with it.

“No time. It’s already infected, because your father is a _bleeding idiot_.”

“What’s in the bottle?”

“Gin.”

“For the pain?”

He leveled me with a look like I’d just asked if turians had feet. “No, that’s what the gag is for. The gin’s for me.” Doc Prekashan slammed a quarter of the bottle in one gulp and pulled a _fucking laser cutter_ out of the second duffel. It came to life with a harsh buzz. “Put your hands here and here.” He gestured entirely too casually with the cutter to Dad’s knee and three-quarters of the way up his thigh.

“Are we _really_ doing this _here_?”

Clacking his mandibles once, he speared me with another glare. “The hospital staff are going to ask entirely too many questions about where and how and _why_ , much like you’re doing now. Hands. Here and here.”

“What about an anesthetic?”

“Atria, your father’s blood is a hundred proof at the point. He ain’t feelin’ much of anything.”

“ _You’re insane_ ,” I muttered, placing my hands where directed. I pushed my weight down to hold Dad’s leg steady, suddenly very aware of the amount of operating space Doc Prekashan would have to work with. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Ain’t my first hunt, kid. Just hold still.” He took another gulp to steel his nerves.

The question nagging at the back of my brain finally wriggled free and escaped my mouth before I could stop it. “Do you… are you _actually_ a doctor?”

His sharp bark of laughter was my only answer. I still don’t know if it was an affirmative because my brain launched itself out of the equation the second that saw made contact. It cauterized as it cut. My vision tunneled to a pinprick of light, my ears filled with a tinny buzz, and down I went.

I woke hours later to the sharp, acrid stench of industrial cleaner and a water bottle in my face. “Dad’s resting in his chair. Camicidia’s babysitting.” My brain had been replaced with lead while I was out, I was sure of it. Sitting up was a chore, even aided by Ali’s hand between my shoulders. Doc Prekashan, and all evidence of his impromptu operation, had vanished. If it wasn’t for the wreckage of the _Merkava_ and the gaping hole in the hangar, I could’ve convinced myself I dreamed the whole thing. A fat lump of something stirred on my legs.

There was a varren pup on my lap. Ali’s eyes echoed the confusion in mine when I gestured wildly with my eyebrows at the wrinkly, blue-striped thing pinning me down.

“Where?”

“Fuck if I know, Atria, I found you like this.”

“Stray?”

“On _Taetrus_?”

I shrugged. It took ten minutes to get my feet under me and even longer to make it up the stairs. Every time Ali offered a hand, I batted it away. I needed to see Dad, and I needed to get there on my own. The pup followed at my heels, bumping its nose softly against my calves in encouragement.

Ali’s Omnitool chirped to signal a sent message. Cami emerged at the top of the entryway stairs dressed in a lavender silk robe and not much else. Ali’s voice was hushed when he spoke. “We’ll be upstairs if you need us.”

I nodded. I was too tired to say much else. I had questions, and Dad had answers.


	9. Salt the Land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These aren't the answers Atria was looking for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to NoisyNoiverns and BethAdastra for helping me noodle out the prosey parts, and sticking with me through the really rough ones.
> 
> If you want a soundtrack, the song playing in the beginning is "Ain't No Grave" by Johnny Cash, the second flashback is "Dangerous" by Royal Deluxe, and the third is "Way Down We Go" by Kaleo.
> 
> Chapter-Specific Warning(s):  
> \- gratuitously excessive use of swear words  
> \- heavy alcohol use  
> \- heavy, heavy gore  
> \- amputation mention  
> \- honestly this whole chapter is heavy

Soft, tinny music cracked through the ancient record player that, until then, I didn’t know was functional. Puffs of dust clouded the air with each solemn beat of the drums. “ _Well, meet me mother and father, meet me down the river road._ ” Johnny Cash’s breathy baritone struggled out of the old speakers. Other than the bandaged stump peeking from under the hem of Dad’s cotton boxer shorts and the dull, haunted quality of his dark eyes, he looked his normal post-run self, slumped in his chair like a tired monarch carrying the weight of the kingdom on his shoulders.

“Dad?” My efforts to keep my voice soft still made him jump. He quickly dismissed the action with a grunt and a gesture for me to come closer. He made a sound somewhere deep in his chest when he patted his right thigh, subvocals warbling _distress-confusion-pain_ at the unfamiliar sensation. The dull smell of whiskey and smoke on his hide, once comforting, was tainted with the sickly-sweetness of _fresh_ alcohol. I tried not to let the discomfort show on my face as I crawled into his lap. He hummed softly along to the solemn crooning of the long-buried Man in Black. It used to lull me to sleep. The emotion dancing through the lyrics hit too close to home.

The twang of guitars faded into a soft crackle as the needle jumped across the end of the vinyl. I rolled my head up to search his face for some indication he was still present. “Dad?” He hummed in response. “What… happened?”

Taking another long drag from his cigarette, he grumbled out an exhale, taking care to blow the smoke away from my face. “Shit, princess, you go right for the throat, dontcha?”

“You were gone for a _month_ ,” I whispered.

“’M sorry.” The rough apology carried with it the weight of too many left unsaid. They hung between us in bitter silence, echoing every argument he’d ever had with Mom. His right mandible circled slowly, searching for something, _anything_ that could resolve the tension, and only then did I realize his left was hanging limply in place. “I owe you the story, don’t I?”

‘ _You owe me so much more_ ,’ I wanted to say. ‘ _This is your fault. Your contact got mom killed._ Your _past caught up to_ her.’ I ground my jaw to hold it all in. It wasn’t worth it. What could I have said to him that he hadn’t already repeated to himself hundreds of times already? “Yes.”

He snuffed his cigarette on the threadbare arm of his chair and cleared his throat.

“I paid Kask an unexpected visit…”

——

_Talus kicked in the door of Kask’s office, banging the sheet-metal off the wall behind it and sending it rattling to the floor in a cacophonous chorus of clanging that made his shit-drunk brain recoil. He blew a billowing cloud of smoke from the gaps in his maw to prevent the bile in his throat from spilling on his boots._

_“Sitting-fucking-_ pyjak _, huh? That_ refer _to the_ ship, _or my fucking wife?” He flicked his spent cigarette to the ground, smearing the ash in a filthy metaphor for the line he was about to cross._

_The datapad in the information broker’s hand dropped into his lap, all four eyes widened in horror._

_Talus crossed the room in two strides. Kask clambered away from his desk in a feeble attempt to put as much distance between himself and the apex predator closing in for the kill. He kicked his office chair out from behind the desk as a last-ditch protection; Talus swatted it away without breaking eye contact. It ricocheted harmlessly off the wall and tipped over, castor wheels squeaking their protest. Talus caught Kask’s throat in one hand and slammed him against the back wall. Haphazardly-mounted cork boards clacked twice against the steel from the impact._

_Talus pushed his brow plates against the broker’s forehead in a perversion of the gesture he once shared with Fira. “Who?” he growled._

_“T-Talus -”_

_He pulled back and slammed the_ batarian _into the wall again. One board popped free, clattering onto the desk. Datapads slipped from under it in an awful cascade of noise. His head was swimming with whiskey and unbridled rage. “Who the fuck killed Fira?”_

 _“_ Forlack’s _… cell.” Kask’s eyes bulged from the pressure on his windpipe. “Some old grudge… about a sand shipment.” Talus released his grip, dropping the_ batarian _the foot and a half difference in height. He coughed until he gagged._

_Talus made to leave, pausing when Kask spoke again. “It was supposed to be you.”_

_“Been tellin’ myself that a lot lately.”_

_“You destroyed my office.”_

_He glanced at the imprint he’d hammered into the wall with the broker’s body, chuckling darkly. “Little_ paint’ll _fix that right up.” He rolled his tongue across his teeth as he drew his Brawler and splattered Kask’s brains across the dent._

——

“It took me a while to track the bastards down. Should’ve checked Omega first,” he muttered around the fresh cigarette between his mouthplates. The cherry flared to life with a hiss under the flame of his lighter. “Should’ve done a lotta shit.”

I buried my face further in his cowl. The pup crawled into Dad’s lap with me. Dad glanced down at the wrinkled nugget curled against his stump.

“I’ll get to that part, pup. Anyway, the shits were holed up on Omega…”

——

_Talus pushed the Merkava’s engine to its limits, hauling ass into port and racing the docking sequence to the bottom of… was it the third bottle already? It didn’t matter. He had a case of the shit at his disposal. His knuckles glanced off the airlock’s control panel, leaving a thick gouge and blue lacquer in their wake. His Omnitool pinged its displeasure at the seventy-one missed calls filling his voicemail. He shut his eyes against the torrent of Atria’s increasingly distressed messages blasting through every nerve ending._

_He checked his armory one last time. Eviscerator on each shoulder. His Brawler to the left, Fira’s spare Carnifex to the right. Knife on his left forearm. Three ammo blocks, four heatsinks, two flashbangs, pack of smokes, lighter, flask._

_Forlack’s cell was headquartered out of an old shipping warehouse deep in the Gozu District. If he was lucky, they wouldn’t know he was coming._

_Talus wasn’t known for his luck._

_He had to immediately pivot back behind the edge of the door to avoid the hail of bullets the second it slid open. “Okay, new plan,” he muttered, tossing a grenade over his shoulder. He gave the ringing in his skull three seconds to fade to a tolerable level and launched himself into the fray. They aimed high, not expecting him to slide in on his knees. Instinct kicked his nervous system into overdrive. The first blast from his shotgun took the head off some poor bastard posted up by the door. Two more shredded the shields on the adept trying to flank him. Her barrier flickered in panic. The screaming of the gun’s heat sensors drowned out the sick crack-squish of gun-butt-on-human-skull. “Fuckin’.” Crack. “Three.” Crack. “Shot.” Thump. “Piece of- **SHIT.** ” A well-timed throw heaved him head-over-spurs into a shipping crate with a dull clang._

_The report of a Viper sent a jarring burn straight to his bladder. That was going to be a problem._

_“Give it up, Talus.” Forlack’s annoyingly calm voice rolled through the loudspeakers. “You’re outnumbered and outgunned. You should have turned back when you saw the trespassing notices.”_

_“Joke’s on you, ya four-eyed fuck,” he shouted back, switching to Fira’s Carnifex behind the crate wall. “I can’t fuckin’ read!”_

_Six shots. Time to make ‘em count._

_Talus lifted his helmet’s visor and shotgunned the contents of the flask. The visor snapped shut, bringing with it the fade of blue rage. The ghost of delicate hands and a slim, warm body pressed against his back. Sweet, soda-tinged breath whispered against his neck._

_‘Kill ‘em all, baby. Let their Pillars sort them out.’_

_He rolled from cover, counting his shots._

_One. One merc down._

_Two, three, step-slide. Two fell in rapid succession before the first had finished bleeding out._

_Four hit a wall, five hit home._

_He rolled into shot six, narrowly dodging another throw._

_Take cover, pop sink, breathe._

_Talus was halfway to his target. A sniper round glanced off his shoulder and a different sort of blue knocked the crate shielding him into a wall. “Would you **stop that**?” He switched back to his Eviscerator to blast the biotic that tried to nail him with another throw._

_Weapon switch, safety off. He continued his rampage to the observation deck’s ladder with one shot left. The flashbang was overkill, sure, but Forlack deserved much worse than a headache and like hell Talus was going to let the bastard take him out before he had the chance to deliver._

_The cell leader in question was face-down on the floor, spooning his Viper, when he hoisted himself up the ladder. He kicked the rifle out the door on the other side, and rolled Forlack onto his back with the return of his foot. He wasn’t expecting the point-blank concussive round that ripped through his thigh. Forlack wasn’t expecting the sharp kick to his face from an injured leg. Tit-for-tat._

_Talus planted his boot on the batarian’s throat, partially to get the weight off his throbbing leg, but mostly to keep the asshole from shooting again._

_Forlack let out a gurgling cough. “You kill me, you won’t find your whore’s ship. She’s probably still rotting in the cargo hold.” He turned his head to the side and spat shards of teeth. “If the vorcha haven’t gotten to her.”_

_Putting more weight on his throat was well worth the pain. “How ‘bout I kill you anyway and drag one ‘a your lackeys along as a guide? Sounds better ta me.”_

_“As if they’d help you.”_

_Talus called over his shoulder. “Hey, any a’ you assholes still alive down there?” One lone hand shot up in surrender. “Outta cover. Hands where I can see ‘em.”_

_The asari sprang up like a battlefield daisy, hands above their head._

_“You know where my wife’s ship is?”_

_“Dock twelve,” they blurted. Their eyes darted quickly to search for an exit._

_‘Coward.’ Talus flicked a mandible in annoyance. “She on it?”_

_“Last time I was on guard rotation.”_

_“Great.” Talus put one shot between their eyes and turned back to Forlack, switching back to his Eviscerator. “Shouldn’ta killed Fira. She was ninety percent of my impulse control.”_

_Forlack sneered from his place on the floor. “And the other ten?”_

_Talus pumped the shotgun once and left a bloody crater where the leader’s face used to be. “Ammo blocks are fuckin’ expensive.”_

——

The varren’s soft snoring was the loudest thing in the room. The ceiling fan ticked rhythmically, mixing with the crackling speakers. They created a harmony in the pin-drop silence as I fingered through the Rolodex of questions filling my brain.

I swallowed. “Did you find her?”

Dad’s voice was thick with grief when he answered. “Yeah.”

I didn’t want to ask the next question burning the tip of my tongue, but it fell from my lips against my will. “Where… _is_ she?”

Dad took a deep drag from his cigarette to quell the warbling in his chest.

——

_Talus hobbled his way to Dock 12, stopping periodically to slump against walls to rest. The Galatea was as spotless as the day she left port. It made him uneasy. She should have battle damage, a missing engine, something to indicate a fight._

_The denizens milling about gave him a wide berth. He stifled the keen rising in his throat as he keyed in Fira’s lock code - their anniversary. He’d smelled death before. ‘Blossoming rot’ wasn’t an odor someone forgot easily. But those were people that deserved it, either because of sheer stupidity, or because they were standing on the wrong side of his shotgun. They weren’t his bondmate. Beautiful, wild, indestructible Fira Cassi, formerly Valetoria Marcetius, the mother of his children and love of his life and the one thing grounding him in reality._

_The airlock swooshed open. Talus swayed on his feet as the gut-wrenching stench of putrefaction hit him with the force of a charging krogan. It grew heavier in the air with every staggering step forward. He gagged, pushing through the molasses-thick foulness to the source of the assault on his senses. The cargo hold was crusted with patches of deep navy that stuck to his boots, smeared in a bastardized wedding-aisle through the row of crates leading to the gooey pile of armor and bone and rotting plates that once ran by his side. Flashes of Fira in her secondhand gown, her small hands wrapped in his, tied together with a sapphire ribbon, fought against what he thought might be a shattered femur, a cracked rib, ripped scabs dripping fresh cobalt like flower petals on the bloody carpet, his injured leg carrying him faster and faster to collapse in the carnage, his bondmate, his falling star, his life, his -_

——

“ _Dad!_ ” I shouted, rousing the pup from its slumber. Dad’s trembling hands shook ash everywhere, his glassy eyes fixed on some point far beyond the dividing wall. His functioning mandible twitched sporadically, his whole body convulsed hard enough to jostle both me and the varren. It looked like one of mom’s seizures, but _worse_. Much worse.

He snapped back to the present with a gasp.

“Where’s the body, dad?”

He keened in short bursts every time he tried to speak. He finally managed to get a grip on reality. “I called in a favor,” he whispered. “One a’ the few people I still trust on Omega. Runs an incinerator. Did our c-” His voice caught in his throat. He cleared it with a grunt. “Did our ceremony.”

I worried my lower lip between my teeth, shutting my eyes to brace against the impact of another wave of grief.

A beat passed between us. “She’s in a box. All that’s left is dust and bone.”

“Her ship?”

He pressed a key into my palm. The bright, anodized metal burned my skin. “She’s yours. Scrubbed clean, ready to go when you’re big enough to see over the dash.”

My lip quivered. Tears tingled behind my eyes, but whether they were out of anger or pain, I couldn’t tell.

I rose, standing next to his chair, frozen in place. My mind raced to stop the angry rant from spearing Dad with more arrows than he’d already taken.

“Pup’s yours too. Name’s Fishdog. He followed me back to the docks.” Dad inhaled shakily. “Didn’t have the heart to leave ‘im.”

I stared in disbelief at Dad’s addition and the cork popped on my self-control. “So, that’s it then? You vanish for a month on some selfish, half-assed vengeance spree, you leave me here, _alone_ , to take care of _your son_ while you go gallivanting off to your old stomping grounds and play the holovid action hero, and you bring me _a fucking varren pup_ as if it’s gonna fix everything? You crashed through the front wall, Dad, or does your drunk ass not even _remember_ that part? I had to watch Doc Prekashan _saw off your fucking leg_ while he himself was _also_ blitzed out of his plates!” My hands shook, clenching the key in my fist until it cut into my palm. “Come on, Fishdog.” The pup flopped out of the chair and followed behind my heels as I stormed towards the door. I paused in the doorway. “ _Fuck_ you, Talus.”

Had the room been any louder than dead silent, I would have missed his soft “I’m sorry.”

“Tell that to Mom’s ashes.”


	10. Nothing Left but the Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The spiral continues, and Atria's had enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-Specific Warning(s):  
> \- teenage angst  
> \- heated familial arguments  
> \- gratuitous alcohol usage  
> \- there is so much unaddressed PTSD in this family

Doc Prekashan checked in twice a week - mostly to make sure Dad didn’t get an infection, partially to make sure Fishdog was adjusting properly, and a little bit to make sure I wasn’t spiraling.

I was.

But I wasn’t going to tell _him_ that.

Our conversations mostly consisted of the old crested barging into my workroom and asking if I was okay. I’d curtly tell him I was fine, he would leave, and I would go back to piecing together the jumble of old ship parts that would eventually function as a temporary prosthetic to get Dad back in the shop, or repeatedly stabbing my desk with the utility knife Dad gave me for my tenth birthday. It was usually the latter.

It took four months for Doc Prekashan to clear Dad for prosthetic use. In that time, I’d put together something functional, most of the front wall had been repaired, my desk was missing all four corners, we were about six thousand credits in the hole, and Dad had probably killed his liver twice over.

The day I dropped the heavy spring-and-rod leg in Dad’s lap was the first time I’d seen him smile since before… _before._

After a brief adjustment period, he managed to make it down the stairs into the garage to work on fixing the _Merkava_. I had to help more than I used to, but at least he was doing something other than drinking all day. The _Merkava_ was almost back to her former glory, if you could call it that, and with Dad back in the hangar, we could start climbing out of the looming pit of debt.

Ali and Cami’s visits became more frequent. It was nice having another girl around the house, and her chipper personality was rubbing off on Dad. He started telling shitty jokes again. He _showered_. He drank less.

I’d love to tell you it ended there - that Dad got sober again, that I stopped punching walls until my hands bled, that my brothers got acquitted, that the box on my shrine was just… someone else. I heard so much Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard over the next four years I can tell you their greatest hits by heart, and which ones put the thousand-yard stare in Dad’s eyes.

Meddom, 24 Intaes 2171 started like any other day since Dad left his pity-parade. He was shoulder-deep in the drive core, swearing at Fishdog to stop gnawing at his prosthetic. I was drenched in sweat from the shitty venting fan trying its best to cool the entire hangar despite parts of the front wall still being open. It was one of the hottest summers on record. Cami sauntered down the stairs in less-than-an-appropriate amount of clothing for an active workspace and rolled a bottle of water across the floor to Dad.

“Take a break and hydrate, _saeri_. You’ve earned it.” She draped herself over a clear spot on the workbench, handing me an ice pop.

Dad grunted as he rose to his feet, using the ship to hoist himself up. He gulped the water greedily. “Don’t call me that,” he grumbled. “Ain’t that old yet.”

“ _Yet_ ,” she chuckled.

“Unless you got somethin’ you wanna tell me,” he teased before finishing the bottle and chucking it into the trash corner.

Cami’s hip slipped from its perch on the bench. A rare moment of clumsiness she brushed off, returning to her almost-flawless elegance before anyone could see. She cleared her throat. “No, of course not.”

“Damn,” he replied in mock-disappointment. “And here I thought you was gonna tell me I’ll be a grandfather at 46.” He glanced around quickly, as if he surprised himself with the excited thrum in his subvocals.

Cami’s mandibles flared. “I can see it now, Pop Pop Talus, bouncing a chick on one knee and regaling them with wild tales of your youth.”

“Lemme get this dad thing down _first_ , then we’ll talk about a couple Dictionary-Juniors runnin’ around.”

“Deal.” She gazed up at the _Merkava_. “She’s really coming along. You two make an efficient team.”

Dad flicked his crooked mandible in a smirk, banging the hull above the drive core with his wrench. “Atria knows this ol’ girl better’n I do.” I smiled around my ice pop. “Now if I could get this damn drive core to fire up, that’d be _peachy_.”

“She just needs a little more elbow grease, that’s all.”

My ice pop hit the floor at the same time Dad’s wrench clanged off the concrete. It was reassuring gravity was still working. My head went spinning. Dad’s mandibles rotated idly as he turned slowly towards the source of his sudden memory-trap.

“ _Wh-what did you say?_ ” he whispered.

“Talus?”

He said something under his breath we couldn’t hear over the chattering of his mandibles. The escalating keen in his throat sounded like an engine firing up, propelling him faster down the runway into another wave of grief.

“ _Talus_.”

“I said, _get out_.”

Cami grabbed at my arm to pull me out of the hangar with her, but I was glued in place by gravity’s increasing hold on my heart. I wanted it to suck me down into the planet’s core and crush me. “Go. I’ll be fine,” I muttered. She nodded and evacuated up the stairs moments before Dad’s fist dented the _Merkava_ ’s hull. The echo turned my stomach slightly less than the quiet _ow_ that croaked out of his mouth. I waited for the hangar to fall silent again before speaking.

“Dad?”

“You wanna twist the knife again? Now’s your chance,” he spat. His eyes were locked on something in the middle-distance. I wasn’t even sure he was talking to me.

“What are you talking about?”

He shook his head. “Been seein’ her out of the corner of my eye.” He started towards the stairs, stopped mid-stride, and corrected his trajectory towards the other door. “See if you can get the drive core working,” he called on his way out.

I watched the door for a while after he left, hoping he’d come back. Hoping he wouldn’t come back. I didn’t know which I dreaded more. I threw myself into getting the drive core functional. I didn’t know what was wrong with it, or what Dad had done, but it kept my hands busy. I don’t know how long I was wedged in the damn thing. It could have been ten minutes, ten hours, three days. It was _hot_ , my grip was slipping, and a wayward spark of eezo knocked my hand back hard enough to bruise. I pushed out and onto my feet and _screamed_. My hand hurt, my head hurt, my heart hurt, everything sucked and mom was dead. I shut my eyes against the searing pain that ripped up my spine and sent the wrench spinning into the wall. Tools and datapads scattered halfway to hell off the workbench in a flash of blue. The acrid stench of ozone burned my nose. My ears felt wet. The world spun around me. My knees hit the ground. I was really sick of passing out in the goddamn hangar.

As per the routine, I came to with Alion sitting next to me, a cold bottle of water in front of my face.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked groggily.

“In his chair.”

“Cami tell you what happened?” The water made me nauseous.

“Yeah. We heard you going off. I haven’t been outside, I didn’t know it was this hot down here or I would have come to check on you sooner.” Ali’s subvocals warbled an apology.

It hit me. He didn’t know. “Yeah. I guess the heat got to me,” I lied, pushing down the bile churning in my gut. Everything ached. “Can you help me upstairs?”

I lost consciousness twice on the way up to my room. I woke in pitch-darkness and thought for a brief second I’d gone blind. The light of my Omnitool eased the panic. Not blind, just night time. I wolfed down the energy bars someone left next to me while I read Cami’s lengthy, eloquent apology. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know, but that didn’t ease the bitter taste sticking to the roof of my mouth. The muffled shouting downstairs _also_ didn’t do it any favors.

The house went quiet when my foot hit the top step, as if Dad hadn’t just been yelling at the top of his lungs. He stood stock-still in the kitchen, facing the doorway to the hangar. I hadn’t heard it open or close. He was alone. His eyes were haunted. He quirked a mandible in my direction in acknowledgment. I made a soft sound in reply. The only sounds breaking the silence were the too-loud beep of the microwave, Fishdog’s staccato dream-grunts, and the click-scrape of Dad’s prosthetic on the tiles. He took his meal - cold pizza and whiskey - into the den, I took mine - reheated pizza and a glass of water - upstairs. Four hours and one biotically-floated bolt later, he started talking again. My over-ear headphones and old Terran pop drowned it out enough for me to focus on getting the part off my desk again.

It became our routine. Shouting. Silence. Food. Floating. When Dad wasn’t talking to whatever ghosts he’d drug up from his past, he _paced_.

And paced.

And paced.

Linni moved into my room so I could watch him. I moved my shrine out of the living room and next to the hangar door so I could visit it when the whiskey finally knocked Dad on his ass. I kept my voice low, but really, I could’ve shouted and it wouldn’t have woken him.

Shouting. Silence. Glance at shrine. Food. Floating. Pacing. Pray. Sleep.

I asked Grandma _why_ , over and over, _why Mom_? Silence. I asked Mom _why_ , over and over, _why Dad_? Silence. I don’t know what I was expecting.

Shouting. Silence. Ignore shrine. Floating. Headache. Stumbling. Sleep.

Four years. Cami and Ali tried to make it in town at least twice a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. Linni started moving around with a walker. He didn’t let a little thing like being told he wasn’t supposed to walk stop him from scooting about. If only we all had his determination. The routine remained unchanged.

Until Cami and Ali stayed for a whole week and noticed the stagnation. The shouting was louder, Dad’s gravelly baritone drowned out by Cami’s high, shrill screaming. It didn’t stop when I tiptoed down the stairs, pressing myself against the wall to escape their notice and sneak into the kitchen. In any other context, Cami wearing nothing more than a sheer old-Hollywood-glamour dressing gown and a silk teddy while shouting at my Dad in his robe, boxers, and single fuzzy slipper would have been _hilarious_. I regretted taking my headphones off to eavesdrop.

“-and you come into _my_ house-” Dad’s tirade was cut off but another round of Cami’s ranting.

“ _Excuse me?_ Who the _fuck_ is paying your bills while you drink away your savings? Who the _fuck_ is feeding your goddamn _kids_ while you wear a trench in the _goddamn_ floor? I’ll come into this house whenever and however I damn well please!”

“ _I never asked for your fucking help!_ ”

“We’re _family_ , you incorrigible old _shit_ , we’re going to help you whether you like it or not! I’m not going to sit idly by anymore and watch you spiral yourself into oblivion while your children starve! You know Atria hasn’t said a fucking word to _anyone_ in the past four years?”

She was wrong. I had, they just weren’t listening. I looked over at Mom’s picture. It would’ve been a great time for a sign. A door slamming. Spoons flying across the kitchen. A ghostly boot hitting both of them in the face. _Anything_.

“Don’t you _dare_ bring-”

Cami cut him off again. “Oh, I’m _going_ to bring Atria into this, because while you were fucking off in the Terminus your _eleven year old daughter_ was here, trying to scrape by and raise _your son_. She called us fucking crying because she thought you were _dead_ and _Linni_ was going to go hungry, with no fucking care about her _own_ health. She moved her little brother into her room, not that you fucking noticed - she’s been a b-”

“ _Don_ _’t you dare_.” I hadn’t heard Dad use that tone since the night Nico snapped at Alion.

“ _She_ _’s been a better fucking parent in the past six years than you have in your entire life,_ ” she hissed. The windows shook with the combined chorus of two royally pissed-off turians trying to out-growl each other.

“You have no _right_ to project your own twisted image of me onto what I’ve done for this fucking family, what I’ve _sacrificed_ ,” Dad thumped his prosthetic for emphasis. “All I knew was that batarians came for my wife. As far as I was concerned, killing every last one of the bastards was the only thing I could do to keep them from coming for the rest of my family.”

“And what about the other twenty-two years? Two of your sons are in _prison_ for the next five-to-ten years, _if_ my attorney can get their sentences reduced, Alion can hardly speak to you, Atria is nonverbal again and not even remotely able to grieve properly while she cares for _your_ five year old, who - _by the way_ \- took his first steps without a walker last week while you were chasing the bottom of a bottle. And-”

“Would you let me-”

“No, I’m not _fucking_ done. You’re wallowing in your own fucking pity parade while your daughter picks up your slack, when _you_ should be _her_ beacon of hope. _You_ should be her rock in this sea of shit _you_ dropped your family in and instead, you’ve become the anchor weighing her down. You need to get your shit together,” Cami paused. Her gown swished across the floor as she crossed the room to get in Dad’s face.

“Or you need to pack your shit and _get the fuck out_.”

The routine resumed with silence. Dad was at a loss for words, collapsing in his chair with a quiet keen. Cami waited for his response. Grandma stared straight head, her chin turned up in pride. Mom smiled down at Linni. Tears burned behind my eyes as I slammed the hangar door open. The pictures clattered to the floor, shattering on the tiles.

I ran. I made a beeline for the docks and didn’t stop until the _Galatea_ _’s_ airlock had shut tight behind me. I crashed into the pilot’s seat and fired up her engines. By the time anyone caught up I’d be long gone. My jaw popped in protest against the vicious grinding of my teeth. I looked back.

No one followed me.

The _Galatea_ screamed out of the docks while my screams shattered the silence surrounding me.


	11. Interlude II: Undercover Operation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faus is doing his best, Rima's not impressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another perspective switch hello  
> Thanks to [NoisyNoiverns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoisyNoiverns) as usual for betaing this whole chapter and conlang help!
> 
> Chapter-Specific Warning(s):  
> \- mild gore at the beginning  
> \- i broke my f-bomb record guys  
> \- Detective Rima "Power Top" Facius
> 
> Chapter Glossary  
>  _zuikos'i:_ Turian organized crime syndicate, based out of the Terminus Systems.  
>  _kretek:_ (repurposed clove cigarettes)   
> _zatzuta:_ "faceless;" slang for an undercover cop

_[Got your bitch. Come get what’s left or we’ll keep sending pieces.]_

Faus quickly shut the unmarked box and tossed it across the room. It bounced off the wall, sending the severed digit tumbling to the floor. Mocking him. He gagged. _Fuck_. Akkadius was a ruthless bastard, but this was a new level of fucked up. He shoved his hand roughly over his crest as he sagged against the wall. His gizzard twinged, threatening to spill his lunch.

“Go _where_ , you overdramatic _fuck_ ?” Faus didn’t have the slightest idea where to start, he couldn’t just pass out flyers in the wards advertising his complete ineptitude to do a _single fucking thing right_ . Spirits forbid he find the _one_ person in the galaxy that made him want to… to _what_ ? Go legit? Start a happy little family somewhere sunny? They’d fucked _twice_ , she made his brain stupid, and now she was paying for it. His dad was right; once a fuckup, always a fuckup, he left catastrophe in his wake and everyone else was stuck doing damage control.

He pulled up his omnitool’s interface. Who could he call? Who could he even _trust_?

He paced. Punched the couch. Kicked his helmet. The line clicked open and he damn near jumped out of his plates.

“Rima? I’ve got a really big problem and I need you to _not_ shoot me.”

* * *

“You _what_ ?” Faus shrank under the collective stares of the cafe’s other patrons. Rima tore another chunk from her wrap before continuing. “You’ve gotta be _fucking_ kidding me. You’re joking, right?”

Faus winced at the specks of bread and lettuce hitting his zygomatic ridge. “Can you keep your voice down? People are _staring_ ,” he whispered, drumming his talons beside his untouched kebab. 

Rima snorted. “They can go _fuck themselves._ ” She made deliberate eye contact with the group of Suns watching them like vultures circling a carcass. “You want me to believe _you_ , the guy that thinks a bag of crisps counts as a serving of vegetables, stole an _entire_ slave ship _from under your psycho ex-boss’s nose_ and smuggled the _cargo_ to some backwater colony?” 

Well, when she put it like _that_ , Faus had to agree it sounded… questionable. “Yeah, I mighta… done that, but that’s not why I need your help.” He took a deep breath. Chugged half his Tupari. Started to speak, wussed out, lit a cigarette. She couldn’t legally shoot him, but he would be prepared for it regardless. “They have Atria.”

Faus followed Rima’s forgotten lunch as it dropped to her plate in a clatter of cutlery. “For how long?” Her face shifted into a steely mask and he _felt_ her eyes blowing out the back of his skull. Her voice dipped into a low growl. “ _How long have they had her, Faustius?_ ”

He swallowed. “I don’t know. They sent me a note and her… _finger_ . I don’t have a location or a time or… _anything_ , that’s why I called _you_.”

Rima plucked the cigarette from his mouth and took a drag of her own. She didn’t give it back. “How the _fuck_ am I supposed to go to my boss with _any_ of this?” She ignored his frantic waving and coughing as a result of the cloud of smoke engulfing him and continued. “I took the last of my paid time off to meet you in this shithole, and you’ve got an unsigned, ransom-esque note and a severed finger. I dunno if you’ve looked at a calendar lately, but this isn’t some black and white detective vid. I can’t just waltz into Faril’s office like ‘Lieutenant, _I gotta hunch_ , I gotta go outta my jurisdiction ta _save my gal_ .’ I’ll be laughed out of the precinct and right out of a _job_.”

“This _is_ your jurisdiction, ain’t you a vice cop or some shit? They _kidnapped_ a _Hierarchy citizen_ , they’re _torturing_ her, and-”

Rima smacked her palms on the table. Faus scrambled to keep their drinks from toppling over and joining the forks on the floor. Her sapphire eyes _burned_ , twin flames that threatened to scorch him alive. “ _Faus_ , you spirits-forsaken _idiot_ ,” she hissed, mandibles spread wide to show her teeth. “They snatched her on _Omega Station_ , in the _Terminus Systems_ , and I can’t just do whatever I want, wherever I want. Even _Spectres_ have jurisdiction limits.”

His head fell into his hands. “How much time you got left?”

Rima flipped open a switchblade to pick her teeth. “My ship leaves tomorrow afternoon. _Fuck_ , I have to tell _Talus_ his goddamn _daughter_ got nicked.” She kicked the table leg and swore, regretting it immediately. The damn thing was bolted down; Faus thanked every spirit he could name for small mercies.

“I have to find her. I can’t piece this together on my own,” he groaned, then hazarded a glance through his fingers at the irritated crestless sitting across from him.

Rima grimaced at the stray piece of meat on the end of her knife, flicking it between his browplates. “Yup, you’re right on both accounts.” She sank into the ripped plastic seat with an exhausted sigh. “I can move my flight one more day, and that’s it. You don’t breathe a fuckin’ _word_ of this to _anybody_. Asshole got any bars he frequents?” Her fingers danced across her omnitool’s interface to reschedule her itinerary.

He pushed the skewers around his plate while he racked his brain for any memory of Akkadius’ social life. “There’s Shaft Six and Sugar’s, but other than that he didn’t… go out much.”

Rima exhaled. “Any he _did business_ in? Guys like that are paranoid as fuck, there’s no way he invited clients back to your little hidey-hole.”

Faus needed to eat _something_ . He’d been unintentionally fasting for three days, and the vau-and-veggie skewers had looked _so_ promising half an hour ago, but all he could manage was to bring one to his mouth and set it back down. Repeatedly. Ten times, to be exact, and at right about the eleventh he realized he’d completely forgotten to answer Rima’s question.

“Need me to take it off the stick for you, your princeliness?” Rima fluttered her eyes, chin perched delicately on her intertwined fingers. Her elbow was resting in her sauce cup, but if she noticed, she made no indication.

“There’s a nightclub here - Supernova. He used a back room there to meet clients ‘til the guy that runs it kicked his ass out, but by then, he’d built enough of a base for himself that he didn’t need to meet people in person anymore.”

Faus slid Rima’s drink closer to alleviate the choking fit brought on by her abrupt attempt to inhale the _entire_ cigarette. The rapid flare of her mandibles spewed smoke signals he couldn’t decipher with every cough. She gulped her water greedily, and once she’d finished gasping for air, she slammed her empty cup on the table. “I think I heard you wrong. I _know_ I heard you wrong, because you did _not_ say your asshole ex-boss used to do business in a _zuikos’i_ club.”

“That would explain why he got kicked out then, wouldn’t it?”

Rima sunk further into her seat, kicking Faus’s ankles out of her way, and sighed. “I guess we gotta do some shopping if we’re showing up at a mob-run establishment, because _that_ ,” she gestured to all of Faus, from his faded hoodie to his beat-to-shit pants, “is _not_ gonna fly in there.” She put a hand up to silence his protest. “And if you go in armor, you’re not getting _anything_ out of _anyone_. We have to blend in and look non-threatening.”

Eight hours, three upscale-for-Omega stores, and a significant amount of argument on Faus's part later, he was stuffed into a suit he disliked greatly and Rima was putting the finishing touches on her obscure-enough-to-not-be-questioned marks. “You sure this is gonna work?” he asked, running a finger under his collar to loosen it. Why the _fuck_ anyone would pay an _obscene_ amount of credits for a suit that did its very best to strangle them, he’d never know. He checked his reflection in the full-length mirror. Taetrus red looked odd on his face, but damn if he didn’t look _fine as hell_ dressed like a rich bitch ready for a night on the town.

Rima looked him over and sniffed. “It’ll do. I’ll do all the talking, you just sit there like pretty arm candy.”

* * *

Supernova was, as its name suggested, about as brilliant as a dying star against the dingy backdrop of the station. Bright, color-shifting holo signs announced its presence and the barely-muffled bass pounding inside blasted an explosive rhythm down the block. Faus’s momentary excitement at the prospect of ‘ _fully nude mixed-species dancers’_ was dashed at the length of the _line_ . And the fact that Rima had stuffed him into a _suit_ for _nothing_ . A few clusters of people were dressed in standard night-on-the-town clubwear, but for the most part, they were either armored or dressed _down_. They were gonna stick out like balls on a shatha.

Faus was clotheslined by his own collar when he made to queue up. He whipped around to figure out what the _fuck_ that was for, but the words quickly backpedaled down his throat at Rima’s deadpan stare and her iron grip behind his neck. “We have to get in line. I was getting in line. Why are you looking at me like I just took a shit on the walkway?” The heavy sapphires around her neck caught the shifting light, mirroring the chill in her gaze.

“Who’s point in this investigation?” Rima was taking _that_ tone again. He was suddenly five again, just got caught with his hand halfway in Boss’s secret cracker stash, and was about to get sent to bed without dinner.

“You?” he offered, head ducked into his cowl.

“Did I tell you to get in line?”

“No, but-”

Rima sighed, jerking her head in the direction she had been heading before he almost blew their cover, down the alley behind the club. “We aren’t the standard riff-raff. You see this dress?” She gestured to the glittering emerald gown clinging to _every_ inch of her body. “Do I look like the type a’ bitch that’d be caught dead on the main floor?”

 _That_ was a loaded question if Faus ever heard one. Rima was six feet and some change of pissed off cop that could, and would, strangle him at a moment’s notice should his usefulness run out. He shook his head.

“That’s what I thought.” Rima laced her arm around his elbow and sashayed around the back and up a set of hidden stairs. The hulking, tattooed human guard blocking the doorway didn’t phase her with his heavily-accented request for a passcode. “We’re friends of the Cassi’s,” she purred, examining her talons as if the brute was merely an _inconvenience_. “Let us through.”

Faus slotted his hand against the pistol at his back, ready for a fight, and dropped his mandibles in disbelief when it _worked_ . Once safely out of earshot, he tucked his head against hers to mumble, “Just _how_ far will droppin’ Atria’s family name get us?” The unspoken question lingered in his subvocal concern: _Who the_ **_fuck_ ** _is she related to?_

Rima snorted. “For you? Probably knocked out in an alley at _best_ . And _don’t_ mention her dad if you like your crest attached.” She gracefully took a seat at a table far from the crowd and gestured for Faus to take the seat next to her.

“Shouldn’t we be asking around?” Faus snapped his mandibles shut at the side-eye shot his way. He averted his gaze and silently flipped through the drink terminal to place their order.

“Nope. We sit and wait and _someone_ will drift our way.” Rima glanced at the terminal. “Just tonic water with a lime. I need to be alert,” she commented idly as she drummed her talons on the table. The sharp metal extensions left a starfield of indents in the glossy surface as a testament to her patience. Their drinks came. She swirled her talons through the condensation pooling on the table around her glass, mapping out constellations in the pockmarked cluster she created.

Faus scrunched up his nasal plates into his pint, and right when he was wishing for something stronger, the rough, wiry drake that had been glaring at them since they sat down approached their table. His eyes scanned them like a security beam, settling on the heavy gems adorning Rima’s statement necklace before flicking their attention to Faus. “What’s a well-to-do couple a’ wine-sniffers like you doin’ in a place like this?” His gravelly voice washed over Faus in a cloud of thick cigar smoke.

Rima crossed her legs, opening the slit in her gown up to her hip. “Hmm, depends,” she dismissed over the rim of her glass. “We might be looking for someone.”

She produced a small silver case from _somewhere_ Faus couldn’t quite figure out and flicked it open to reveal a neat row of thin, dark tubes capped in more silver. How Rima afforded top-credit kreteks on a Hierarchy cop’s salary was yet another mystery. She slotted the mouthpiece between her jaws, then clicked a mechanism on the side of the case. A small arc of electricity sparked the kretek to life. The case returned to its hiding place in her gown. The light, spicy smoke swirled across the table on her exhale and battled against the acrid stench of their guest’s. “Maybe you know him.”

The merc growled deep in his throat. “Shut up, bitch. The _cresteds_ are talkin’.”

Rima’s eyes narrowed as the business end of her kretek made contact with the smooth hide at the crook of the merc’s elbow. “I may be his second wife, but he’s my _third_ husband.” He yowled in pain. “So, do you want my _hard-earned_  credits?” She lifted his chin with a knife-tipped talon to force his widening eyes to meet hers. “Or would you like to find out what happened to Husband-Number-Two?”

“You’re fuckin’ _mental_ ,” he snapped.

“Yeah,” she purred, flicking her right mandible in a satisfied smirk. Rima dropped her talon to the table, clicking down the chit she’d hidden in her hand and sliding it forward. She held it hostage beneath the pad of her finger, to be released on the provision of a satisfying answer. “He owes me money. I intend to collect the debt.”

“Sucks to be him.”

Rima hummed in agreement. “More or less.”

“Cetus.”

The sudden command jolted Faus from his attempt to squirm himself under the table and away from Rima’s adopted persona. It was the sultry rasp of a hen that spent more time shouting than using her inside voice, and it meant nothing but bad news. He struggled to locate the source, which had him grasping for his gun in an attempt to dampen the alarm klaxon in his brain. The merc, he assumed was the Cetus in question, seemed to be having the same visceral response. Rima simply took another long drag.

A shadow just behind Cetus moved slightly and two bright green glowing orbs appeared above his head. “Leave.” Cetus complied, stumbling over his own spurs in his eagerness.

“ _Crow_ ,” Rima hissed. Her mandibles were set tight against her face. Faus heard her jaw pop and sank further against the back of his seat, praying for the spirits to take him swiftly and painlessly.

“You don’t have jurisdiction here, _zatzuta_.” The pure vitriol on Crow’s tongue lit up Faus's fight-or-flight instinct. His heart pounded against his keel; they were fucked, for sure. “Our business stays out here, so you better have a damn good reason for betraying Boss’s trust like this.”

Rima sniffed. “You heard of some asshole named Akkadius?”

Crow stepped closer and took the seat Cetus had vacated. Faus realized then why she’d been so hard to pinpoint: her plates were ink black with an oil-slick sheen and her hide was just as dark. The shades clutched in her hand explained why he hadn’t caught the tell-tale reflections of her violet eyes sooner. It brought him no comfort. “Slaver trash. Hope he rots.”

“He’s got Atria.”

Static tingled beneath Faus’s suit, constricting the too-tight collar around his throat further as Crow’s biotics flared with her barely-concealed rage. He froze. Any sudden movements would likely result in his entire nervous system being separated from his body on an atomic level and he preferred it _not doing that_. Her low growl vibrated the table. “Does Boss know?”

Rima shook her head. “And neither does Talus, if I can help it. I don’t want the twins acting rashly and getting her killed. _That_ is why we’re sneaking around.”

Crow’s lightshow faded slowly as she exhaled to calm down. “You know I can’t keep that from Boss. Not on his turf. That’s his _niece_ , for spirits’ sake.”

Faus’s heart dropped through the floor. _His niece. His fucking_ **_niece_ ** **.**

“I know, I _know_ , the whole situation is fucked, I have to go _home_ day after tomorrow, we have _no_ idea where he’s keeping her-” Rima paused to catch her breath and compose herself. “Faus got a finger and a note, that’s all we’ve got to go on.”

Crow snapped her attention to Faus, who was doing his best impersonation of an empty chair to avoid exactly _that_ . “Why _you?_ ”

He made to answer, but all that managed to squeeze out was a sharp squawk. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Because they-” he swallowed “-they, ah, think she and I… are a _thing_ .” A beat. “I may have freed a shipload of captives, Akkadius is a little pissed, and they think she has something to do with it. But she _doesn’t_ , this is _my_ fault, and I’m _trying_ to fix it.”

Crow clenched her fist, snapping the plastic shades in half. “Office. _Now_.”

Faus had looked death in the eyes several times throughout his life. It wasn’t nearly as terrifying as the living shadow across the table.


	12. Old Habits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is comfort in familiarity, until the best parts are replaced with silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featuring cameos by [NoisyNoiverns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoisyNoiverns/) and [xMidnightSun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xMidnightSun/)'s characters.
> 
> Chapter Specific Warning(s):  
> \- get your tissues, lads

I was stupid. I was angry, and grieving, and very, very stupid. I was halfway to the relay when I realized I had no idea where I was going other than  _ away _ . Away from Dad, from Cami, from that house, from the silent box that contained the one person who had answers to all the questions ricocheting around my brain. My knuckles skidded across the edge of the dash where Mom’s feet once rested. I banged my fists on the console, kicked my feet, tore at my hair, and screamed some more for good measure, just so the cold, uncaring universe was well aware of my endless frustration.

At least the VI was still working. Small mercies. I pulled up the app on my omnitool I hadn’t touched in years and copied my audio files into the ‘Entertainment’ section, right next to Mom’s music and books and shitty romcoms.

Maybe Omega would have my answers.

I keyed in the destination, activated autopilot, queued up the first file, and started exploring.

The  _ Galatea _ was exactly how I remembered it. Uncle Temek did good work cleaning her up. It still smelled like her; vanilla and cheap incense and Dad’s hugs. Her voice floated out of the speakers three steps out of the cockpit.

_ [Hi, Princess! You must be asleep, it’s… wow, really late there.]  _

“I wish,” I whispered, running my fingers across the airlock door. It was the first time I’d spoken aloud in a while, and I jumped at the tinny echo of my own voice in the empty ship. One button. That’s all it would take.

_ [You better be asleep, I’ll be home early tomorrow morning to drag you out of bed and I don’t want any attitude on our day out.] _

I kicked off my boots at the threshold to the living area and headed for the galley. The cabinets were empty; I don’t know why I expected anything different. 

_ [I found all the files you loaded for me! I can’t believe you stuck Dining on Flowers in there. You  _ **_hate_ ** _ that vid! Anyway, I’ll see you soon. I love you.] _

“I love you too, Mom.” I nearly choked on the words. Tears streamed down my face. I continued on. The next message played.

_ [Hey. Heeeey. Princess. Snugglebug. Dad n’ I’re gonna be home late but I wanted… wanted… Red, baby, help.] _

She laughed at whatever Dad said. They were both drunk, I remember, it was their first night out in months. I dug an old comforter out of the locker by the couch and wrapped it tightly around my shaking shoulders. It smelled like them. If I shut my eyes tight enough, I could almost pretend I was sandwiched between them while we laughed at the  _ horrible _ screenwriting of Mom’s favorite vid. If I concentrated hard enough, Dad wouldn’t be there anymore.

_ [We wanted you to know we’re okay, we’re waitin’ for this  _ **_slow-ass cab_ ** _ n’ then we’ll be home. Thank you so so much for watchin’ Linni, baby, you’re such a good big sister, I promise we’re not gonna leave you alone with him too much.] _

“Didn’t keep that one, didja?” I spat. I regretted it immediately. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t mean to break it. I clutched the blanket tighter and tried to extract as much of her scent as possible and separate it from Dad’s.

_ [I love you, snugglebug!] _

“I love you too, Mom.”

_ [Love ya, Princess.] _

“Fuck you.” The words sat bitter and heavy in the silence. No one followed me.

I wandered back to the cabins, barging into my brothers’ just like I used to. It was just as messy as they left it. Janus’s bunk, mostly, he still had clothes everywhere, and the stuffed pyjack he’d been searching for was resting comfortably on his pillow. I hugged it close and wondered how he was faring. Not well, probably. I didn’t know much about Maitrum, but nothing I’d heard had been good. I swiped Nico’s Blasto hoodie off the hook and dropped the comforter briefly to slip it on. It was almost,  _ almost _ like a hug. His headphones were the next victim of my commandeering spree. I’d apologize when he got out; His five years were almost up and we hadn’t heard his sentence got extended. I frowned. That line of thinking implied I’d even go  _ home _ , and that wasn’t currently on the agenda.

I padded quietly across the short distance to Mom’s cabin, as if too loud of a step would disturb the peace. I knocked, out of habit, and her chipper voice startled me.

_ [Guess what, snugglebug? It’s technically your birthday already and you’re fast asleep.] _

The door swooshed open and her vanilla-sandalwood blasted my senses. I rushed forward and shut the door behind me so it wouldn’t escape.

_ [You’re eleven! You’re getting so big, I can’t believe it.] _

I collapsed on her bunk, shutting my eyes against the grief crushing my ribs. I could barely hear Dad snoring in the background over the messy, wet hiccups bubbling out of my throat.

_ [But you’ll always be my baby girl. I beat your dad to the punch this year, he’s out cold, and my message will be the first one wishing you a happy birthday in the morning. I love you!] _

“I lo-” My voice caught. I sniffed, coughed, cried harder. It took four attempts to babble out the words before I shattered completely.

Mom was gone.

No one followed me.

I woke some time later to the VI’s proximity chime. Right. Relay. I’d made the jump before - once with Dad’s guidance and once without. I confirmed Mom’s forged identity, got the okay, and space bent around me. The rest of the trip passed in a blur; I vaguely remembered a hangup in the Serpent Nebula, but otherwise the trip back to Omega went exactly as it always went. I was uncomfortably numb to the fresh wave of memories trying their best to drown out the shitty recorded  _ thump-thump-click _ of talons on well-loved wood and Dad’s raspy warble. It was a lullaby, or what passed for one by his standards. I wished they tried a little harder.

Docking was more difficult than I remembered, but I managed. No one paid any mind to the scowling, teary-eyed teenager weaving through the crowd like a phantom. At that point, I wouldn’t have cared if they  _ did _ . I was just another street rat in an oversized hoodie again. My Terminus-grit-pop-fueled autopilot carried me all the way to the old mine shaft I spent part of my childhood squatting in; I gave it the half-second of contemplation it deserved and carried on. Turned left. Walked three blocks. Turned right. Walked two more blocks. The keycode to our old building hadn’t changed, apparently, and the elevator still hadn’t been fixed. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the same wiry old landlord was still in charge. Three flights up, down the hall, fifth door on the right. I paused. The apartment had probably been leased out, for sure. I waved my ‘tool over the lock and it flashed green. It wasn’t trespassing if I had a key, right? I checked over my shoulder. No one followed me. I don’t know what I was expecting. There was no Janus to shove past me, no Nico to hoist takeout over my head and ask what was taking me so long, no Alion to run me over because he was buried in his omnitool, no Mom. I opened the door and felt around for the lightswitch.

It was like we’d never left. The empty-container-covered table was cleared of its usual mess - evidence of Mom’s last cleaning spree in a vain attempt to get our deposit back - but otherwise, same ol’ shithole, sans family. I slammed the huge headphones over my ears to drown out the upstairs neighbors’ screaming match and played Mom’s messages until I fell asleep on the ratty couch.

After a week of takeout and wallowing in the mess of my own emotions, the funds on Dad’s emergency chit finally ran out. I pulled up my messaging app to ask Cami for more and immediately closed it. I wasn’t ready to face the increasingly desperate string of where-are-you’s and please-come-home’s from both my brother and my future sister-in-law that were waiting for me. I selected the seven two-second voicemails from Dad, deleted them, then battled with the tiny part of me that still cared to listen to the final one.

It won. I pressed play. His voice hitched twice before he cleared his throat. He sounded like shit.

_ [Come home before y’get yerself killed, babygirl. I can’t lose you too.] _

He choked down the keen sneaking out of his throat and sobbed a final ‘ _ please’ _ . The message continued for several seconds while he babbled incoherently. It was muffled; the low grumbling whine of an inconvenienced varren indicated he’d buried his face against Fishdog. I managed to parse out the soft ‘ _ I need you _ ’ as the message ended and the regret settled like a stone in my gut.

A familiar ache woke slowly from its slumber, and by the time I made it to the market, it was gnawing through the ice in my chest. As I faded into the crowd, it had reached the unbearable level that wrapped its burning grip around my throat and  _ squeezed _ , I couldn’t breathe, I needed a distraction, I needed my  _ mom _ . 

Hunting for a target was as good a distraction as I could get on Omega without drugs or booze, and easier than you’d think. Avoid batarians and anyone actively paying attention to their surroundings. Don’t hit small stalls, they can’t afford the loss. Don’t skim from anyone with kids. Don’t hit anyone with their omnitool  _ active _ . Don’t make eye contact. Find your exit, don’t run, walk with  _ purpose _ .

My skimming software was  _ old _ and relied on brute force to get the job done, but it worked well enough without having the haptic interface active. I made a mental note to tinker with it in my indefinite downtime as I dodged a small group of Suns; Omega doesn’t have many rules for regular visitors, but street kids have our own set, and staying the  _ fuck _ out of the way of the Big Three is pretty high on that list. The crowd parted long enough for me to spot my target; a quarian accompanied by a pretty young drake roughly the size of  _ Dad _ , who might pose a problem if I didn’t move quick enough. They were moving towards me, directly in my path.  _ Perfect _ . I kept my stride even as I passed a little  _ too _ close, jostling my wrist against the quarian’s. A happy little ping momentarily muted the music in my headphones half a second before a sharp  _ “Hey!” _ quickened my pace.  _ Walk with purpose _ . I barely heard the second dual-toned shout over the blasting vocals of Crashing Angels gaining ground faster than my own legs could carry me. My initial assessment was right - the big bastard was  _ definitely _ a problem and I broke Rule Six, Part Two to keep my head un-bashed-in. 

The sudden _vwop_ behind me threw my rulebook out the window. **_Fuck that._** I ducked and wove between people who were just minding their own business and would likely get caught in the crossfire of my own misfortune, ignoring the pings as my software unintentionally skimmed a few more ‘tools in favor of letting the tempo rocket me down the walkway. _Mine shaft._ I needed a mine shaft. They wouldn’t follow me there and I could slide into a maintenance hatch to keep from getting _ripped apart on an atomic level_. There was a crash and a small scuffle behind me; I silently thanked the denizens of Omega for not giving a single fuck about a biotic shouting down a thief.

I was almost certain I gave myself whiplash as I skidded into the first shaft I found. The static charge tingling down my spine had every hair standing painfully at attention. My own weak blue field flared in the dim light of the alcove, illuminating the dark scuff on the wall.  _ Too close. _ I wrapped my sleeves over my hands to ease my quick descent down the maintenance ladder - a cool, flawless slide that was interrupted by the jarring impact of my boots on someone’s face.


	13. Hooligans and Shenaniganry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes all you need is good friends and bad influences to make the day suck less. Sometimes those are one and the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More cameos from [NoisyNoiverns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoisyNoiverns/) and [xMidnightSun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xMidnightSun/)'s characters.
> 
> Chapter-Specific Warning(s):  
> \- again, with the swearing  
> \- and the drugs  
> \- and underage consumption? is that a warning?

Tessa-Rae Dunn was a freckle-faced ginger wisp of a girl with a wide grin and a liar’s gap - currently made significantly worse thanks to my ratty old work boots. “Getcher fat ass off me!” she slurred, struggling to free herself from where she’d crumpled like cheap sheet metal beneath me. Yep, same Tessa. She spewed more profanity once she was free, and shrieked when she realized she was missing her left front tooth. I scrambled to my feet when a crude knife seemingly materialized in her left hand. “Better watch where yer goin’ on  _ our _ turf.”

I searched the shadowy passage for her backup and spotted two other teens slowly creeping up to join the fray. One, a short brown girl with glasses two sizes too big and hip-length dreads hiding most of her face - summoned a small purple drone. The other - tall, blonde, and scowling - stuck to the shadows. “You’re movin’ up, Tessa. Got  _ turf _ now, huh?” Egging them on was  _ stupid _ , I knew that, but I was outnumbered and I had no idea if my biotics even  _ worked _ beyond hovering small machine parts a couple inches off my desk. Tessa might’ve been a twig, but she was still bigger than a bolt.

She stilled in her approach, eying me warily. I squinted against the  _ rude _ beam of light shining from the drone. “Ain’t you the mute kid that used to run with Twitch? Shit, I thought you  _ died _ .”

I winced at the old memory, then played it off with a shrug. He was one of the good ones. Got mixed up with the wrong guys and paid for it. “Guess I’m just lucky.”

Tessa bowed her head and tapped two knuckles against her breastbone - the Terminus sign that was one part salute to those passed and one part superstitious ward against being the one to go next. Her friends followed her lead, and out of habit, so did I. She scrunched up her whole face to sniff in my direction, then grimaced. “What’s yer name, anyway?”

“Atria.” It tasted bitter on my tongue, saying my name out loud on my old stomping grounds, like the filth of Omega would tarnish the first gift Mom ever gave me. “Cassi,” I continued, quieter. Dad’s gift tasted even worse, and I regretted even mentioning it.

“You smell like shit, Atria,” she stated. “You lookin’ for a crew or passin’ through?”

I considered the offer. On one hand, forming attachments again was the third most unappealing idea at the time when all I wanted to do was disappear, but on the other, starving was the  _ second _ , and I needed backup if I wanted to avoid the  _ first _ \- dying. “What’s my take?”

“We split even. Quinn hacks, Kri distracts, I got the stickiest fingers on Omega. What d’you got?”

“Scrap. Both fightin’ and mechanically speaking. And I’m -” I paused, wondering if mentioning my budding biotics qualified as a skill or a reason to distrust me even more.  _ Fuck it. _ “I’m biotic. Sorta.”

Tessa looked me over, then looked to her team, getting two shrugs in response. She turned back to me, spat in her palm, and shot her hand out. “Ya gotta clean up first. Our place is shitty, but it’s got a shower and Quinn has extra clothes ‘til we hit the Markets again.”

I worked up what little saliva my dehydrated mouth could muster and returned the spit-shake, sealing my fate.

True to Tessa’s word, the one-room flat was indeed shitty and had a shower, and was somehow both an upgrade to my family’s old apartment and a downgrade. At least it wasn’t empty-but-haunted by the ghosts of happier times. We divided the place into quarters so we each had our own space and the most privacy a few bedsheets tacked to the ceiling could offer; Kri - “just Kri, short for none of your business, last name you couldn’t pronounce anyway” - did her acrobatics on the makeshift uneven bars, Tessa snorted her pills - also none of my business - and divvied our takes, Quinn fiddled with her drone - which I learned was named “Dumond” - and her terminals, and I fell back into my old routine, sans shrine. I started lifting larger objects, rotating them, and  _ once _ , I managed a solid throw when Quinn unexpectedly poked her head through the gap between our sheet wall to ask if I wanted dinner.

For a solid month, everything went as great as it could go considering the situation. We had our off-days when the skimming didn’t provide much, or we got caught lifting and had to make a break for it empty-handed. We bickered, as teenagers were want to do, but at the end of the day, all we had was each other, so we made up.  

It was fine. We weren’t starving, we had clean clothes, utilities, and a shelter, which was more than most kids on the station had. 

Everything was fine. Until my omnitool’s chipper little alarm helpfully reminded me about my birthday. Forty-three new messages not-so-helpfully reminded me I had a life somewhere else. That not all the ghosts in the old apartment were dead. Just the one.

I clamped Nico’s headphones over my ears and played Mom’s message.

_ [Guess what, snugglebug? It’s technically your birthday already and -] _

My fingers scrambled to cut the audio. I thought I was ready. I was wrong.

I tried to cover my ears and block out the rush of inappropriately cheerful memories escaping their box, but the headphones made the offensive mistake of hindering my efforts and became the next victim of my frantic denial. They spitefully remained unharmed when I flung them against the wall.

Tessa’s sheet yanked back, sending a few tacks pinging off the wall behind me. “Hey! What the  _ fuck, _ Scrap?”

“Don’t  _ fucking _ call me that!” I grimaced at the whine hitching my voice. So much for a stiff upper lip. “It’s nothing, leave me alone.”

She scrunched her nose at the sagging sheet. “Yeah, okay, whatever, you need a tampon?”

“A what?”

“For… nevermind, I’m not yer mom,  _ that _ talk ain’t my responsibility.” I must’ve made a face; her own expression softened and she crouch-walked through the gap to flop down next to me on the nest of blankets I was using as a bed. She ignored the face I made next, instead fishing around in the pocket of her ratty sweatpants to offer a half-crushed pack of menthols. That was it, the moment Mom tried to warn us about as she was taking a drag off her own: don’t take cigarettes from gutterpunks, they’ll ruin your lungs, and you’ll get addicted, blah-blah-blah.

I picked one that was only  _ slightly _ bent and balanced it between my lips while I attempted to flick the lighter to life. Tessa got tired of watching me struggle, took the lighter, and lit my cigarette, then her own. I mimicked her deep inhale. The bitter, icy smoke scalded my throat. I choked until I dry-heaved, and that only served to make the burning worse.

When Tessa managed to compose herself long enough to breathe, she clapped me between my shoulder blades in an effort to help. It didn’t. “Never done that before, huh?”

“ _ No _ ,” I wheezed.

She snorted. “So what’s the deal with all the -” she waved her hand in the direction I’d thrown my headphones, then made a gesture as if she was trying to find the right word “-  _ teen angst _ ,” she finished dramatically.

I watched the tiny cloud I exhaled dissipate toward the ceiling. Looking up helped fight the annoying tingle behind my eyes. She was still watching me expectantly when I looked down. I sighed. Sucked my teeth. Rolled my eyes. Her thin eyebrows rose in a challenge. “It’s nothing.”

“ _ Really? _ You just… like throwin’ shit for no reason? I don’t buy it.” She bumped her shoulder against mine, jostling my hand dangerously close to lighting my bedding on fire. I glared in response. She glared back. We stayed locked in our battle of wills until Quinn squirmed angrily under her sheet and slammed the window open, then returned to her section with a huff. I didn’t know what she was trying to improve; the general stink of Omega wasn’t much better than the thickening haze of menthol smoke.

“My mom’s dead,” I blurted. My chest tightened. Saying it out loud was different than repeating it over and over in my head. It made it  _ real _ . I recognized the look on Tessa’s face - it was the same pity-frown Cami kept shooting my direction over the past five years. I  _ hated _ it. She opened her mouth to speak, and I curled my knees to my chest, burying my face in my folded arms to block out whatever empty sympathetic bullshit would inevitably come out.

“I’m sorry.” The unexpected softness in Tessa’s voice struck a nerve.

“For what?” I spat. “You didn’t pull the trigger.” I made the mistake of lifting my head and caught the hurt in her eyes. She didn’t deserve my vitriol. I mumbled an apology she waved off.

“You wanna talk about it?” Tessa offered, leaning over to take what was left of my cigarette from my hand before it burned down to my knuckles. I shook my head. “You wanna go skim some schmucks and hit up Mazzi’s? That always makes _ me _ feel better.” 

My ‘tool chimed, and she saw the incoming birthday wish from Cami before I could delete it. Her gap-toothed grin meant nothing but trouble. I shook my head harder, adding a hand-wave for emphasis. “ _ Tessa, _ ” I warned.

“I’d be the  _ shittiest _ friend if I let you sit around and mope on your birthday, Tri. How old are ya?”

“Sixteen, but -”

“C’mon, food n’ booze or bein’ a sad sack a’ shit? What sounds better?”

Quinn poked her head between the sheets — the metal rings in her dreads tinkled together with the sudden movement and it reminded me of cats in the vids whose collars jingled when they got excited. “C’mon, Tri,  _ free  _ snacks, our treat,” she added, flashing her ‘tool.

I groaned out a frustrated “ _ fine. _ ” Arguing with  _ both _ of them was a waste of time and going out would both make the day go by faster and distract me from the endless loop of Mom’s last message.

My reluctant agreement triggered a flurry of movement. Tessa dragged Kri out of her section to fill her in as if she hadn’t heard the whole exchange, I got shoved into the bathroom for a shower, and when I emerged, I was immediately hit in the face by the outfit my friends had deemed acceptable. The second I got my pants on, I was pushed out the door before I could process what was happening - I had to tie my boots on the elevator ride down.

I caught the tail end of Quinn’s excitement over a particular food vendor through the hazy zone-out my brain had adopted as a defense against Tessa’s constant yammering. The girls yanked me towards a bench and Quinn dropped a disposable tray containing a pile of curry-slathered sausage and potatoes in my lap. She slapped my hand when I reached for one of the forks.

“ _ Wait _ , this is the closest thing to cake we can get,” she quipped. She pushed her dreads behind her shoulders, then flicked the lid off her lighter and held the lit metal case over the tray. “Make a wish.”

I shut my eyes and pressed my mouth into a thin line to hide the light quiver of my lower lip. I wished I could go back in time, that Mom wasn’t gone, that Talus had taken her place, that my brothers weren’t massive fuckups, that they had left me in the gutter where they found me. None of it mattered. Wishing and hoping and talking to spirits didn’t do anything but slap a bandage over gaping wounds. I quickly blew out the flame before I started crying in public. Quinn made a goofy face and started laughing her fool ass off seconds later, causing a chain reaction of Kri’s hissing snicker, my own obnoxious squawking, and Tessa’s trademark snort that had her regretting the mountain of curry she’d impatiently shoveled in her mouth.

Tessa stopped complaining about the burning in her nose by the time we made it to the bar, but instead of going through the front door like everyone else, she insisted we use the storage entrance “ _ because we’re VIPs. _ ” Kri quietly informed me it was because Mazz let urchins use that door so we wouldn’t be bothered, as long as we didn’t nick anything. The storage room led to a small apartment, and our sudden entrance startled the skinny blue drell currently inhabiting the space. He banged his knee on the table when he jumped, letting loose a litany of swears. The girls muttered a nonchalant “ _ sorry, Zippy _ ” in unison as we passed through on our way to the bar. My throat seized up, preventing my echo of their apology. His grumbling was drowned out by the pervasive din of pounding bass and drunk conversation.

I tried to slip by unnoticed when the girls engaged in an excited greeting with the curvy quarian bartender in pink and white and more scarves than could have been practical. I failed, as expected, and let Tessa introduce me to Mazzi’Nahza, the owner. She jingled every time she moved; the lights dancing off the cascading silver discs adorning her hips cast reflections in the shadows behind the bar. Quinn relayed the reason for our visit despite my frantic gestures to  _ not do that _ , but to my surprise, Mazzi took the hint when I instinctively flinched away from her hand reaching to ruffle my hair. I couldn’t parse what she was saying over the noise, and her mask prevented me from reading her lips, but from the upward crinkle of her eyes, I assumed it was something nice, so I offered the warmest smile I could muster and a quickly signed “thank you” in response. I hadn’t gotten far in my sign language lessons with Cami, but at least I remembered that one. She handed us each a beer and sent us out into the sea of inebriation.

I clung close to Kri since she was the tallest and the blacklights turned her platinum hair into a beacon. Noticing my stiffness, she subtly laced her long fingers through mine as we wove through the crowd to find seats at the bar. The only four consecutive empty stools were between a pair of shady-looking batarians and a grizzly krogan with a spiny crest. I got stuck next to the big guy who was thankfully more focused on his own drink than the anxious human sitting too close for her own comfort. I was well within arm’s reach, and that did  _ not _ bode well for me should he decide to take a swing. Rule Five: don’t make eye contact. I kept my focus firmly on the open beer in front of me. It would’ve been rude to not take at least a sip of my drink, right? The beer was a different brand, maybe it wouldn’t taste as awful as the last one. I gagged when the bitter-bread flavor sloshed over my tongue.  _ Nope. Much worse. _

I moved to hand off the offending beverage to Tessa since she was having trouble flagging Mazzi down for another, and  _ of course _ the batarians chose  _ that moment _ to change locations. I slammed right into the larger of the two when he drunkenly staggered too close, spilling half the contents of the open bottle on his pants. Unfortunately for me, he wasn’t too drunk to think he’d just pissed himself. Maybe I should’ve wished for better luck. His slurred “watch where you’re goin,’ lil shit” and the shove that punctuated it was apparently the final two straws that ignited the powder keg of my temper that had been stewing since we left the flat. 

I shoved back.

Bad move, in retrospect. Picking a fight with someone twice my size and built like he fought even bigger guys on a regular basis was stupid enough, but despite the general rarity of non-asari biotics, he was the second I’d run into on the station. He ignored his companion’s pleas to let it go, and I was getting egged on by the three worst influences in the galaxy. My friends rallied behind me; their taunts did nothing to diffuse the situation, he was glowing, and I was about to be stuck fighting this massive bastard  _ and _ his buddy. He swung. I ducked. The miss threw him off balance enough for me to quickly dip inside his reach and help him to the floor by means of a swift kick to his left kneecap. He collapsed to his side. I gave him a parting kiss with my steel-toe for good measure.

We all assumed the wide-eyed gape of the other batarian and his hurried scramble to get my opponent to his feet meant victory.

Quinn leapt forward, screaming, “And that’s why you don’t mess with  _ Atria Cassi! _ ” A few heads turned at her exclamation but quickly averted their gaze.

As it turned out, they were fleeing Big, Bad, and Spiky, who’d lost interest in his drink when the ruckus climaxed. We came to this conclusion when I was hoisted five feet off the ground by a large fist tangled in the back of my hoodie, not unlike one would scruff a varren pup that shat on the carpet. My feet kicked uselessly in a quest to either free myself or connect with anything but stale bar air. Tessa, ever helpful, chucked her empty bottle into the crowd, starting  _ another _ fight. “Scatter!” she shouted. 

I took advantage of the distraction, slipping out of the oversized garment and under the closest table. I dodged stumbling feet, using the tables as cover in the chaos. Two chimes came through in rapid succession; the message from Ali got deleted, Kri’s made the cut.

_ >Meet back at flat. Take the craziest route u can, make sure ur not followed. _

“Helpful,” I muttered. I slipped back out the way we came, regretting abandoning the obnoxious leopard-print hoodie in my escape. I was relieved it was gone, it was hideous, but the damp chill was setting in, and my thin tank wasn’t doing me any favors. My lack of music on the walk back ranked number two on my growing list of complaints. 

Two blocks, turn left, backtrack, three blocks, right. I thought I heard footsteps, but it was  _ Omega _ , you couldn’t spit without hitting a vorcha in the eye.  _ You’re being paranoid because you’re alone and Kri mentioned people following you, it’s nothing. _

One block, right, two blocks, left. I was  _ definitely _ being followed. Whoever-it-was was  _ good _ , their footsteps were  _ just _ out of sync with mine. A shadow moved out of the corner of my eye. I had two options: run like hell, or stand my ground and hope they weren’t  _ actually _ expecting a fight. Mom would’ve stood her ground. Quinn was getting her ass chewed when I made it back to the flat.  _ If _ I made it back. The choice was made for me when I collided with a solid mass of inky-black armor stepping out of a dark patch and right into my path. I jumped back to avoid the grasping talons and straight into another set belonging to the one following me.

“That ain’t a name little kids need to be throwin’ around,” the first hissed.

“Yeah, well, it’s  _ mine _ ,” I snapped.  _ Stupid _ . I’d dug my grave, may as well lie in it. I hoped beyond hope Dad’s name had  _ any _ clout left. “Mad Varren’s my  _ dad _ .” I grimaced. It sounded less whiny in my head.

Number One’s forward-stalk stuttered briefly. “Python, wait.” I figured Number One was crestless, maybe, from the soft lilt and higher pitch of her voice. She stepped closer, kneeling to get on my level. “Did yer little friend say yer name’s  _ Atria _ ?”

_ Fuck that _ . I bolted, heading straight for the building. Number One called after me. I wasn’t falling for that, that’s how kids got snatched up for ransom or vengeance plots in the vids Nico obsessed over. My ‘tool beeped twice to announce an incoming call - of  _ course _ Dad wanted to call when I was in the middle of running for my life. I thought about answering, just to tell him this was his fault too, and maybe goodbye.

He’d been through enough.


	14. Can't Run Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you have to settle for good enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Specific Warning(s):  
> \- underage consumption i guess??  
> \- get your tissues

In the action vids, when the main character gets chased, they always do a cool sequence where they slam through the door and kinda tuck and roll while the door shuts.

It’s not cool in real life and just results in being _more_ out of breath and also probably hitting your head on your roommate’s table. You might piss your pants a little.

Just a word of advice.

An unactivated coldpack hit me in the face, jarring me from the leftover panic getting chased halfway to the apartment induced. I muttered a soft thanks as I cracked the disc and applied it to the rapidly-growing welt on my forehead.

“You get chased or somethin’? We need to arm up?”

“Dunno, Tessa, I’m still tryin’ to figure out if I got a concussion,” I snapped. Too mean? Maybe, but I wasn’t in the friendliest mood after all that, and her casual attitude wasn’t helping.

She put her hands up in surrender, briefly, then went back to angrily flicking her obviously dead lighter and ignoring Quinn’s disbelieving glare. “Imma take that as a yes on the first and a no on the second. I keep tellin’ Kri to move the table cuz I stub my toe on it every damn day.” 

Kri fired back. The resulting bicker didn’t do my pounding skull any favors, and it wasn’t like I could shut myself in my room like I did when Mom and Dad got into it. 

Quinn grabbed a fresh set of clothes and helped me into the shower, against my insistence that I was _fine._ She parked herself on the toilet in case I fell or needed help, again against my assurance that I was a big girl.  

I didn’t feel so big once the warm spray hit my face. 

The timer cut the water off before I’d rinsed completely, exchanged for a fresh wave of pitiful blubbering, and I accepted Quinn’s towel-hug without argument. We sat on the floor and talked a while, about what I couldn’t remember if I wanted to, but eventually our roommates either went to bed or just got bored of fighting and we were still talking. I changed, she resumed her perch, and I sat on the floor between her shins so she could, in her words, do something about the mess on my head. 

As she brushed through the wet mass of tangles, I realized how far I’d let it go. I wouldn’t let Cami touch it and I got in the habit of just hacking off the knotted sections and pulling it up when it got in the way. Hair tangled in moving parts and engines was _not_ a good time.

“My mom used to do this,” I blurted. Quinn made a soft sound, so I continued. “Every night. Well, when she was home, anyway, she brushed it out with her hands and braided it and told me stories before bed.”

It sounded so childish out loud, but it was a happy memory. I didn’t have many of those anymore. “I miss it.” I missed _her_ . I was dangerously close to choking out ‘I want my mom’ when Quinn mercifully saved me from _that_ embarrassment.

“My mom used to do my hair too, and my sister’s, so I get it.” She paused to grab her scissors, then added, “I miss it too.”

I waited for her to continue, share more of her undoubtedly tragic backstory, but she just went back to clipping a chunk of my hair up and snipping away at the rest.

“So… what happened? To all that,” I prompted.

She let the question hang between us until she made it to the next section. “Nothing,” she answered, finally.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, nothing. Grew up in a median-income household in Burbank with a standard nuclear family, my mom was an accountant, my dad programmed software, my sister was annoying as hell.” She pulled a little hard on the piece in her hand and apologized when I winced, then turned my head so it wouldn’t happen again. “I got bored. Ran off. Got mixed up with some older kids I thought seemed cool, ended up here cuz I was stupid and didn’t know no better or think to ask where we were goin’ next.”

I shouldn’t have asked. I willed my jaw to stop grinding with the turmoil of bitterness and jealousy and petty rage. She made a mistake, she was stuck on Omega, same as the rest of us, and she was paying for it.

Quinn switched the focus of our conversation to our mutual love of tinkering with wires and circuitboards while she finished up. I liked that about her, she knew how to read the atmosphere. We all had our sore spots: Kri was a circus kid, but it wasn’t one of the good ones, apparently, I wouldn’t know; Tessa grew up on Omega, same as me, and that’s a big enough sore spot on its own without explicit details; I had family stuff. Quinn had one too, maybe more, but if it ever came up none of us picked up on it.

She dried my hair in silence, then brushed it again. I started drifting off sometime during the process and hadn’t noticed her move until her hands danced lightly across my face to brush a stray strand off my brow. Her legs across mine kept me from hitting the ceiling.

“Sorry, my ass hurt,” she explained, sheepishly. Her hand was trembling slightly as she reached over my head to pull half my hair up. Everything from my neck up burned and I wasn’t entirely sure it was from the hair dryer. She scootched closer. I pulled away subconsciously and she kept a respectful distance. The rhythm behind my ear was familiar; she was just braiding a piece, it was fine. Something soft tickled across my neck that was definitely _not_ hair, but she pulled back before I could ask and blocked my view of her face with a hand mirror.

It definitely looked better than it did before, that was for sure. I fidgeted with the beaded braid and feathers, wondering how long they’d last.

Quinn hesitantly peeked over the top. “Do you like it? I can do something different if—”

“No, it’s good,” I interrupted. “I like it.”

She let out the breath she was holding and set the mirror in her lap. “You had _so many_ split ends, I dunno how they weren’t breaking off every time you brushed it. Did you cut it with a _knife?”_

“Yeah.”

I’d never seen someone’s eyes bug out so much. A soft _‘oh_ ’ was all she could manage before we both succumbed to a giggle fit that faded into a tense silence.

I blinked. Our noses were crushed together until my lungs burned and I had to pull away, breathless. She tasted like candy.

I blinked again. I was halfway down the block with someone else’s coat bundled haphazardly over Quinn’s pajamas. She had her tongue pierced.

I didn’t remember grabbing my headphones on the way out, or cramming myself into a crevice in an alley, or pulling up my ‘tool interface, but while I was there I figured it was as good a time as any to play Dad’s message.

The first half was the distant sound of a lighter flicking to life drowned out by quiet sobbing. Guilt squeezed my throat. My head was already a mess of feelings I couldn’t name and didn’t want to, I wasn’t ready to listen to him again.

_[It’s yer birthday, babygirl. I remembered this year. I, uh. I dunno if you’ll get this, I dunno if yer, if—]_

I wasn’t ready for how _horrible_ he sounded. He’d gotten worse. I wanted to stop it, to drown it out with heavy drums and screeching guitars, but I couldn’t. The hitch in his voice was _my_ fault. I owed it to him to listen all the way through.

_[I lit a candle for you, right next to yer mama’s. She used to get up extra early just t’race me downstairs, tell ya good mornin’.]_  

At least he wasn’t crying alone, even if he didn’t know it.

_[The house’s empty. Cami n’ Ali took Linni over to their place, said he… said he shouldn’t be ‘round me righ’ now. I don’t blame ‘em.]_

He paused again. Fishdog whined next to the mic.

_[I don’t wanna be ‘round me righ’ now either. I’m tryin’, alright? I’m tryna get better, I just… just come home. Please. Please be al—]_

The message ended abruptly as he reached the maximum recording length. My jaw twinged. I’d have to apologize to whoever I borrowed the coat from, I’d apparently been biting one sleeve to muffle my back-cramping sobs and wiping my nose on the other.

_“Atria? Baby, izzat you?_ ”

I must have bumped the callback option by mistake and missed the dialtone entirely. A thousand words sprang to mind, a thousand curses, a thousand things I’d wanted to scream and rant and rave at him, but all that came out was a squeaky, cracked, “Daddy?”

We were both crying all over again, for an indiscernible amount of time. There might have been a conversation in there, or not, it didn’t matter.

I missed my dad, and he missed me.

It was enough.

“ _Where are you?”_

“You’d be _pissed_ if I told you.” There was a relieved laugh weaving into my words and I wasn’t entirely sure where it came from.

“ _Baby, I couldn’t be mad atchu if I wanted to be, I just wanna know yer safe, that’s all. I got guys that can getcha home, just say th—_ ”

“I’m not ready.” The line went silent on his end, and to be honest, it surprised me too. “I’m not ready to come home,” I continued, stronger this time, I was sure I wasn’t ready to go back, not yet.

“ _Where are you?”_

“Omega. I just need to sort my head out, then I’ll come back.” It hurt. I was being pulled in seven different directions and no side was winning. My head was a mess of guilt and grief and anger and other things. I needed my mom.

But mom was gone.

“ _Had a feelin’ you were there. Made a couple calls, jus’ wanted ta hear you say it.”_

“I’ll come back soon.” I chewed at my lip. If was so sure of myself, _why_ did it hurt saying it? “I’m sorry.”

“ _I’m sorry, too, babygirl. I done this whole family wrong n’ I’m tryna fix it.”_ He was quiet for a while, I almost started babbling on just to fill the silence when he spoke up again. “ _I love you.”_

I returned the sentiment out of reflex, but some part of me meant it.

“ _I_ _’ll keep the lights on_.”

The line went dead and I curled up tighter, cried harder. I couldn’t stay in the alley, it wasn’t safe, but I sure as hell couldn’t go back to the apartment after freaking out on Quinn.

So I went home. I turned on one of Mom’s audiobooks and fell asleep on the ratty old couch. My own takeout boxes were scattered everywhere in a mockery of what once was. It wasn’t the same.

But it was enough.


End file.
